Category: Business Tips; How to add ease of use and value to your website

Case Study: needs a teleseminar line that will do a pre-set broadcast.

Case Study:

Client looking for as teleseminar/ conferencing service that will allow them to pre-tape a hour-long interview and then schedule it and play instead of doing a live interview. There logic was that a live interview has lots of unnecessary chatter that they wanted to edit out and give their listeners only the “good stuff.”

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Solution:
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Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Zipping or Unzipping a file…

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Do you have trouble zipping OR unzipping a file….

Here are two choices  both companies offer a MAC and PC version
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WinZip:  http://www.winzip.com/downwz.htm  they offer free and fee versions
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Most MACs used to come with Stuffit which now is $29.99
http://www.stuffit.com/v2/mac-s.html  AND is worth the investment if you don’t have it already.

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Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Tip: Time to back up your Facebook Account

OK everyone… time to back up your facebook account info.

Go to “Account Settings” and at the bottom of the list in the box, it says “Download a copy of your facebook data” click that and continue through… in an hour or so you’ll get an email with a zip that you need to save away on your computer…

If you are very active you might want to remember to do this once a month and if you aren’t that active or don’t use it for business or whatever… at least 2 to 4 times a year would keep your info, photos, etc safe.

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Websites: How to Get and Use an API key for your WordPress site

WordPress is a great way to build your website and web-presence. They offer free software that loads to your server, plugins to extend the use and function of your site and themes that create the image you project. This is an easy and time effective way to get on-line and start your business within 1-3 hours depending on your skill level.

  • Are you using WordPress for your website?
  • Do you get lots of spam?
  • Do you wonder what your stats are?

Read more »

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Tips: naming files; home pages; using icons

Here are a few tips about anything book or business…of course there are a lot more… and please write yours in the comments section below. It’s always nice to share your knowledge… and we love to hear it!

1. Naming files: don’t use punctuation. No ‘,’ commas or ‘.’ periods or ‘/’ slashes or other such OR spaces. Try to fill in any blanks with a ‘_’ underscore or a ‘-’ hyphen. This will make your files read better is uploaded or imported.

2. Home pages: these do best when organized from the beginning leaving room to grow. Start with a flow chart of what you do and what you will be offering. There is a saying… nothing is more than two clicks away for your important messages. And don’t forget that the home page is best received by spiders when the SEO is clear and on keyword.

3. Using icons on your website: icons help an otherwise dull site to come alive and have / give direction to the people who come to the site. There are many places to buy full sets so they look the same or make your own using royalty free images and placing a name to them. Try to keep them in standard places from page to page and post to post, this way you begin to identify a process for your audience to follow to your information.

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Web-Presence: A plugin for your WordPress sites that adds a “Related Posts” section to each post.

The “Best Related Posts” plugin to use with your WordPress site is great for promoting more of your book, product and services at the end of each post you make. Why is this a good thing you ask? For your page ranking stats, your SEO of course!

Google ranks a website according to how important they look. How may pages you have and how many links you have and how good your content is, are among the top ways. But, the main way that Google determines this is by the amount of links that point to a page.

Google considers two types of links in their Read more »

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Book Design: Now what was that phrase again…? Finding the lost words.

screenshot ©netspeak.org

I just heard about this site http://www.netspeak.org that finds words that finish phrases for you… all you do is type in the part you remember and a symbol suchs as ?  *  {   }  [  ] and it’s little wheel starts spinning and poof there is a list of completions for you to choose from.

I wonder if they have an app?

I know when I write I don’t always remember the phrases I’d like to use and tell stories about… this will come in handy.

Do you know of any other tools that might add to the writing experience? Let us know in the comments box on the post page.

and…

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Accepting Credit Cards from your Cell Phones…

screenshot from ©squareup.com

Squareup.com technology catching up with our needs! I remember when I couldn’t accept credit cards except with one of those slide over the receipt processors thingys… then there came the electronic readers then online terminals, virtual accounts and all sorts of restrictions on how you can use them… and then if you are out of the office how to access them… and the fees… oh my goodness one for the service and another for the transaction. I know, it’s just the cost of doing business and I’m ok with that… I like doing business…

AND now we have the option to add a reader to our phones… check them out… this might be what you were waiting for!

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Tips: Copyright info; printing post cards etc.; sending fax changes…

Here are a few tips about anything book or business…of course there are a lot more… and please write them in the comments section below. It’s always nice to share your knowledge.

1. when you send changes marked up ready to fax... be sure to use black ink. If you use blue or pencil the fax might not read it clearly and you’ll have to resend.

2. copyright issues
The Copyright Permission and Libel Handbook, A Step-by-Step Guide for Writers, Editors, Publishers by Lloyd J. Jassin and Steven C. Schechter

The Permission Seeker’s Guide through the Legal Jungle: Clearing Copyrights, Trademarks and other rights for entertainment and media productions by Joy R. Butler, an entertainment lawyer.

3. printers I like and use
http://www.printrunner.com
http://www.psprint.com

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

Did you know there are “Delivery Charges” for ebooks… What??

As we move along into a world of digital ebooks, there appear new items to keep informed about… PC Pro published an interesting article about “delivery” charges when selling an ebook Kindle version.

The main ingredient to be watchful of is how many images you add to your file. You see, images take up more space, and to get good quality images they need to be sharp, and to be sharp it helps if they are a little larger file size than 72dpi. AND if they are or if you have lots of images… your file becomes larger therefore…. TAKING longer to transfer! That’s it… the delivery charge is for Read more »

Remember, do something every day toward your book, web-presence, product, service and promotion.
Karrie Ross,  Book Designer, Web-presence, Branding, Coaching & Consulting Services

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