ChrisKilber.com

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Tag Archives: Best Practices

Power of Expectation – High Five!

October 21st, 2011

What is the usual outcome when someone someone complements you on a job well done? When you accomplish something good? When you achieve something that you’ve been working on for a long period of time? When you even do something simple that keeps you focused on your goals?

Is it, “Oh, it was nothing.” or “Just doing my job.” or “It’s no big deal.” ? That’s what most do. Or they do nothing. They diminish their own success. They feel somewhat embarrassed and try and change the subject quickly.

How you handle successes, even small ones, are just as important as what you do with your failures.

Now there is no question that we learn best by infusing information via several mediums, visual, auditory, reading, and even physical, and by repeating them over a 28 day period, have the ability to reprogram ones thinking.

So try this out for 28 days. For each and every little success you have starting with getting out of bed, clench your fist, pull it, and say “YES!”. If there are others around, do a high five with them. Do a fist bump. Something physical that gives you a feeling of accomplishment, raises your attentiveness, and otherwise makes you feel good. Go ahead and try it right now. Don’t you feel better? Careful with belly bucking and head butts!

Another thing to do after having your mini-celebration is to tell yourself that you earned this, that you deserved this, because you were prepared. Take ownership of the success.

Then use that feeling to tell yourself that this is just the beginning. Your starting the day off right? Use this first success to launch your day, your week, your month, your life.

So if you make a call to someone with the goal of setting an appointment and you achieve those results, high five! Someone calls you and gives you a referral, high five! You close a deal, high five!

What happens is you will have a aura of expectation and will come to expect good things to happen. This will provide you energy beyond belief and others will feel this energy emanate from you. The world will as well. Going to the mall? Go to the front row, there will be a parking place waiting for you. Need to get a hold of someone? They will call you. Closing a sale? No problemo.

Your business can be great. Your marriage can be great. Your life can be great. High Five!

Tim Ferris Interview

December 14th, 2009

4HourWorkWeek
I just got done listening to a webinar featuring Tim Ferris. Tim is coming out with a new and expanded version of his book, “The 4 Hour Work Week”. There are more than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content in the new version. It will be debuting tomorrow, Tuesday, Dec. 15th.

One of the things that Tim spoke about is that the most effective person who makes decisions actually make very few decisions. He said that the questions the most effective people ask themselves when confronted with an issue is that they determine whether it is a one time occurrence or repeatable. If it is repeatable, then they can formulate a policy that will handle the situation in the future. If it is a one time occurrence, depending on availability, it can be delegated or outsourced.

Tim is heads above the rest when it comes to utilizing existing knowledge and if he doesn’t know it, finding someone who does. I’ve already pre-ordered and it will get sent tomorrow. If you haven’t read the original, shame on you. It has launched more people into their businesses of their own than any other single thing withing the last 2 years. You can pick it up for 41% discount below. Enjoy.


48 WordPress Plugins I Can’t Live Without

October 21st, 2009

pluginsDown below I have the forty eight or so plugins that I use on this blog. I have a little blurb about what they do. Because wordpress is so customizable and most of the themes are different, there may be reasons to include one that are missing here and reasons I have some others don’t. But for the most part these are essential. I am almost positive there are new one’s out there that I should have but these have been serving me well. Feel free to suggest others.

Akismet
Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.”

All in One SEO Pack
Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.   As a fan of SEO, I think it’s like putting together a three dimensional puzzle, I like this plugin and it is one of the mainstays of SEO for wordpress.  Of special interest is the “Dynamically Generate Keywords for Posts Page:” option.  The plugin even has it’s own forum if you’d like to learn more.

(http://semperfiwebdesign.com/forum/)

CommentLuv
Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.

Comment Relish
Increases your readership and RSS subscription rate by simply sending a short ‘Thank You’ message to users when they first comment on your site.

Contact Form with Captcha
Simple Contact Form with Captcha Enabled

Custom Field Redirect
This plugin will do a 301 redirect on any page where you set the “redirect” key in a custom field. The value you set will be the URL to where the plugin will redirect you.  In the dashboard when you create a post you have the ability to enter a custom field.  If you create a “redirect” key is will go to the location designated.

Dewplayer
Insert Dewplayer (Flash Mp3 Player) in posts & comments.  There are a lot mp3 players.  This happens to be the one I’m currently using.

Disable Revisions
Disable revision functions in WordPress and delete all entries of revisions in database. It is extremely important to back up your database before install this plugin.  I always hate when there ends up being 8 revisions of the same post.  This should be a custom option built into wordpress to begin with.

Exclude Pages from Navigation
Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.

Facebook Sharecount
The Facebook Sharecount plugin shows the number of shares on Facebook your posts get and allows users to share it themselves.

FeedBurner FeedSmith
Originally authored by Steve Smith, this plugin detects all ways to access your original WordPress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.

FeedBurner Widget
Adds a sidebar widget to easy customize and display your FeedBurner subscribers stats RSS button.

Get Recent Comments
Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar.

Make sure you configure this plugin after activation.

Google Friend Connect Integration
Easily integrate Google Friend Connect with WordPress. To get started, please enter your Google Friend Connect Site Id number in the GFC Integration admin page and choose whether to turn on the social bar or not. You can add Google Friend Connect gadgets to your sidebars by visiting the widgets page.  For help and support see the official Google Friend Connect integration for WordPress page.

Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.

Homepage Excerpts
Homepage Excerpts are great when your theme doesn’t provide this functionality.

LinkWithin
Displays recommended stories and associated thumbnails from your blog.  This is at the bottom of all my single posts.  It provides nice pictures you see below.

MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer
Saves your wordpress blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin.  The reasoning behind this is your blog will ping technorati and many other ping services.  If you edit your blog, let’s say a typo or misspelling or indentation etc, every time you hit publish you are pinging the services.  You may be banned and didn’t even know it. When this goes, so does your SEO.  Visit plugin site

One Click Plugin Updater
Upgrade plugins with a single click, install new plugins or themes from an URL or by uploading a file, see which plugins have update notifications enabled, control how often WordPress checks for updates, and more.

ONW Simple Contact Form
This Plugin creates a simple contact form.

Popularity Contest
This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity. You set a value (or use the default value) for every post view, comment, etc. and the popularity of your posts is calculated based on those values. Once you have activated the plugin, you can configure the Popularity Values and View Reports. You can also use the included Widgets and Template Tags to display post popularity and lists of popular posts on your blog.

Random Pages widget
This is a widget that displays a list of random pages/posts on your widgetized sidebar.

Recent Posts
Returns a list of the most recent posts.

Robots Meta
This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow unnecessary links.

RSS Shortcode
Makes it easy to display an RSS feed on a page

SEO Smart Links
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.

SEO Super Comments
Use your blog comments to get more traffic.

SexyBookmarks
SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.

SimplePie Core
Does little else but load the core SimplePie API library for any extension that wants to utilize it.  It is needed for the Single RSS Colleague plugin found below.

Simple Tags
Simple Tags : Extended Tagging for WordPress 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 and 2.7 ! Autocompletion, Suggested Tags, Tag Cloud Widgets, Related Posts, Mass edit tags !

Single RSS Colleague
A plugin to feature a colleague or tribe member for syndication.  You will find it under by social badges on the right hand side bar labeled “Visit My Colleagues”.  I will be making this available to everyone sometime next week.

Subscribe To Comments
Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry.

Translate
Adds a sidebar widget to display languages into which you can translate your blog.

TweetMeme Retweet Button
Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.

Ultimate Google Analytics
Enable Google Analytics on your blog. Has options to also track external links, mailto links and links to downloads on your own site.

What Would Seth Godin Do
Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and another to return visitors.

wp-cache
Very fast cache module. It’s composed of several modules, this plugin can configure and manage the whole system. Once enabled, go to “Options” and select “WP-Cache”.  One note of caution.  TURN this off anytime you are changing anything.  Then when you are done, turn it back on.

WP-Cumulus
Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress

WP-DBManager
Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

WP-PageNavi
Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.

WP-Print
Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

WP-Sticky
Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog. Modified from Adhesive by Owen Winkler.

WP-UserOnline
Enable you to display how many users are online on your WordPress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).

WP Security Scan
Perform security scan of WordPress installation.

Contributing to the Conversation On Your Own Blog…

August 15th, 2009

conversationOver on a different forum related to marketing and blogging that I am a member of, there was a question that was posed that asked, “Is it poor form to comment on your own blog?” This is very important so I’d thought I’d share it here as well. This is how I responded.

As marketers one of our main goals is to attract people to our sites to have them potentially sign up for more information about potential products or services we may have. I use the word potential because the best way to have someone click the big X on your tab is first appear as if you are trying to sell something. If you are pitching, touting, overtly recommending to buy or sign up, people will do one thing, Run away! This is not to say that you can not recommend things and ask them to buy, but that should only come after they have earned your TRUST.

So how do they earn your trust? Firstly, by not pitching. Secondly, by offering value in the form of insights, education, thoughts, perspectives, interests, and humor. To do this, it will involve interaction. Certainly the number one ice breaker in the whole world is the weather followed by concerns of how things are going. There are psychological underpinnings in this small talk and it is usually a way two people determine whether (pun intended) each other want to continue in a dialog. What’s the best way to do this? It is to engage people in dialog by responding to people in your blog just as Julia suggested. People love it when you engage them and consider their questions, ideas, or concerns important. They even love it more when you ask THEM what they think about something. This isn’t something that we have to be phony about. It’s just having genuine and concerned thoughts and ideas that will resonate with people.

So NO there is nothing wrong with commenting on your own blog posts. In fact I encourage it. I encourage it on all the social media you use. Engaging people and building relationships is something that will differentiate you from all the other spammers using social media as nothing more than an advertising bill board. In all your interactions with new people you meet should end with a question. This is the whole concept behind ATTRACTION marketing.

I’d like to hear your opinions…

Photo Credit McAzadi

True Leaders Listen

August 12th, 2009

leadershipOne of the most important skills you need as a leader is the ability to listen. The Chinese characters that make up the verb “to listen” tell us something significant about the skill. A King, in order to be a true leader, must listen with ears, eyes, and heart … giving undivided attention to the people.

Are you a good listener?

How to Dominate and Master Your Niche With Your Content

August 2nd, 2009

I thought I’d revisit an old theme of mine, and that is regarding content. There simply is no reason you can’t come up with some. Here is a video I made discussing the matter. It is really a culmination of 2 previous posts I did. Make sure you read the comment section as well. There is an experiment I did with the concept that proves this works folks.




The method I describe will make you the master of your niche. You can’t help but learn everything there is to learn about it. By the time your done learning you’ll also have a massive collection of posts and articles that show YOU are the de facto authority of your niche. Google will know this as well.

Here are the links to the other posts:
http://www.chriskilber.com/latent-semantic-indexing-and-google/
http://www.chriskilber.com/content-is-king-learn-what-to-write-about/

If you found this helpful or have any questions by all means comment below. If you think it would be of value to others please tweet about it.

Chris

Content Is King – Learn What To Write About

July 6th, 2009

Content, SEO, Writing, Blogging, Value, How-To, Tip-n-Tricks,TrafficI know a lot of people out there are getting online to somehow start making some money because they have aspirations of firing their boss, staying at home to raise their own kids, supplementing their incomes or retirements, and to nurture their entrepreneurial spit that hides in each and everyone one of them.  If they’ve done their due-diligence they should know there’s a lot more than meets the eye and have partnered up or found someone to emulate to teach them the ropes.  Even then, the bottom line on how successful anyone is going to be in this industry is how much traffic they can generate and how they convert that traffic into sales.

I just noticed that what I’m about to say rhymes but maybe it will help to remember.  That is “The number ONE thing, is that CONTENT is king”.  I heard it said just last week by an online millionaire.  Content for me means, blog posts, ezine articles, videos, reviews about others content, and comments on others content.  I know a large part of the landscape in social media is Twitter, but it may be possible to convey some content, but 140 words won’t cut it in my book.  Twitter is used as the communication channel to tell, educate, and inform others about content that is educational, interesting, and teaches something.  It is merely the communication channel.

Content does not have to be eloquent prose.  It simply has to state some facts, why you agree with or not, why you think it’s important, and what YOUR perspective about them.  The exact same topic should be different than what others write because it will be from YOUR perspective.  If you’ve discovered something that really helped you, write about it.  You have a different perspectives and the people who read your material will appreciate it because they may be just learning, just like you are.  As we speak there are tens of thousands of people a day coming on to the internet to find their fortune. You can be their guide.

So another way I come up with content.  Whatever your niche is going to be, come up with 75-100 keywords about it.   Keywords are going to be your nouns and verbs of the nomenclature of your niche.  As an example I’ll use a niche called marketing.  Here are ten keywords that would be expected  to find  for this niche.  (affiliate, article. auto responder, back link, banner, blog, business model, central hub, and content).  So with those 10 words mathematically I could write about 90+ combination of those  keywords.  Here are about 10 titles you could use from those 10. Attracting Affiliates With Back links.  Do I need An Autoresponder For Affiliate Marketing? Using Back links In Your Article Marketing.  Can Blogging Attract Affiliates For You?  What Kind of Banner To Use On Your Blog.  Using Keywords On Your Blog.  Using Keywords In Your Article Marketing.  The Key to Your Business Model – A Central Hub How To Write Blog Content.

So there I came up with 10.  You get the idea.  There is no reason you can’t come up with 75+ keywords for your niche.  Think them through.  Go to ezinearticles.com and pick the 10 most read articles in your niche and look for them there.  Use a thesaurus and find them.  Then think of as many combination of key words as possible.  An advantage to using multiple keywords in a title is Google will rank them higher.  Then sit down and write.  Step away when your done.  Reread it and check for grammatical errors then post it.  Your done.  I did this one in about 20 minutes.  Went down an had a drink of water and chatted with my daughter, came up to my office and proofed it.  There is no reason not to have content.  Now have at it! Content is king.  If you found this useful consider clicking the Tweet and Face book buttons next to the title.

Keeping Your Rudder Straight

July 6th, 2009

Catamaran, Rudders, Leadership, Priorities, Action, GoalsToday I would like to emphasis that leaders know where they are going. Leaders have charted a course and have taken many factors into account. They rely on their past successful and unsuccessful experiences. The successful experiences provide confidence and teach you what you’re capable of. Likewise, unsuccessful experiences can help you keep your rudder straight. They can reveal wrong assumptions, character flaws, errors in judgment, and poor working methods. Taking time to reflect on experiences is vital.

A leader will examine the conditions before making a commitment. They examine not only measurable sources such as finances , resources, and talent, but also intangibles such as timing, morale, momentum, culture, etc. A true leader will listen to what others have to say. There is no way one can know everything and therefore must gather information from many sources. They listen to members of their leadership team. They also talk to the people in their organization at the grassroots level. Leaders will possess a positive attitude and provide confidence to those depending on them.

Predetermine a course of action.
Lay out your goals.
Adjust your priorities.
Notify key personnel.
Allow time for acceptance.
Head into action.
Expect problems.
Always point to the successes.
Daily review your plan.

Notice the first letter of the list spell PLAN AHEAD. Anyone can steer a ship but it takes a leader to chart the course.

1. Do you have any bad experiences you have learned from or did you just simply forget them?
2. Do you listen to constructive criticism easily?
3. Have you charted a course for you and your team for the next 30, 90, 365 days?


Have a fantastic week everyone and do something remarkable!
Chris

Photo Credit gbrands

I made a wrong mistake

July 1st, 2009

Sad, Boy, Redhead, Mistake, Hurt Feelings
Good evening everyone. Well I have a dilemma that I have to deal with over at Facebook. Well over on Facebook you have the option of not hiding your birthday. Well I have quite a few Facebook friends, 3000+ and I had quite a few people wish me happy birthday. I was given virtual flowers, chocolate, gifts, and even had some people make videos. It was quite overwhelming. This morning I wrote a note thanking around 200 people and I still had some to go. This evening I decided to respond to the messages I received. I wrote up a standardized thank you and commenced answering what I would figure 50 messages. A few minutes into doing that I got a warning message that I was doing something against their terms and to stop. OK. I stopped. Well I also had over 25 friend requests so as I usually do, I accept and put a welcome message on their page. I was into about 10 of them when I got a message saying I was suspended. No account, a lot of hard work over the last year, and I hear Facebook is hard to deal with.

I guess I could panic and be mad, but their system has no way of knowing whether something is legitimate or spam. I kind of wish they had that policy instituted on Twitter. I grumbled a bit and then crafted a letter simply explaining what I was doing. I’ve heard that they will re-instate after a while but it could range between a few days to a few weeks. That’s all I really can do. Now I’ll have more time to spend on this blog. This is a lesson we all can learn from. When you rely on other internet sites to carry your message you need to be prepared in case they simply suspend you or drop off the earth, whether for a valid reason or not. You need to try and get in a position where you host all your own content or as much as possible yourself. You also have to be looking for the next social medium that will replace some of the old and be able to easily adapt.

So as Yogi Berra once said “I made a wrong mistake.”

ChrisKilber.com

Health · Wealth · Freedom in a Modern World

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