A while back, I started a project called Blog Topics, which is still running and provides hundreds of people with ten or more post ideas plus writing advice every week. As I looked into what else people were asking me for, it came out that people were also interested in understanding how to better leverage their blog to build business. I gave a free webinar on the topic and had almost 3000 people register. Because of that, I’m ready to offer the budding web entrepreneurs in the audience a new product that might be helpful to you called How to Blog For Business.

This Isn’t Get Rich Quick Stuff

There are Internet marketers aplenty who will tell you that you can be making six figures in a few months’ time with just a few simple, tested formulas. I’m sure some of those things work rather well, and I am not saying that some folks aren’t making that kind of success, but that’s not what I’m selling. With “How to Blog for Business,” you and I are going to look over several things, from how your site is designed and ready to accept business, to some of the various online business models that might or might not work for you, to how you might promote your offline business via your blog, and more. None of what I offer will fall into the camp of “get rich quick,” and so, if that’s the goal, you might look elsewhere.

We Will Talk About Motivation As Well as Actions

Selling is okay. Wanting to make some money via your blog is a valid wish. If you’re a person who wants to grow your business, this is for you.

Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Yet)

We’ll cover different topics every week, and along the way, you’ll find some things that resonate with you and others that won’t. Don’t jump into this whole hog and think that you’ll be paying your mortgage right away. Instead, let’s figure out what works well for you, how you intend to build your web business via your blog, and let’s see if we can find what makes you successful.

If This Sounds Interesting

If you’re interested in learning more, swing by How to Blog For Business and read through the offer. You’ll also see the free gift I’m including for people who purchase this before the offer expires (on Thursday, August 11th). I hope you’ll find it useful for your own business goals.

And if not, hey, a new free and potentially useful post comes out tomorrow!

Tablets are becoming a popular mobile device, and their impressive endurance is one of the greatest draws. Most tablets can last eight to ten hours even when displaying mobile video or surfing the web.

This is plenty for most users, but there may come a time when you need even more life. These five tips can help you extract every second from your tablet’s battery.

Reduce Display Brightness

Most tablets are simply hardware strapped to a display, resulting in the characteristic tablet appearance. This provides a large display with minimal weight, but it also means there is a large viewing area to power. As with large smartphones, the display often draws more power than any other component.

As such, simply dimming the display will have a positive impact on battery life. While there’s often an automatic brightness feature available, it’s usually less aggressive than needed to provide maximum battery life. Taking control of brightness yourself is often a better option.

Turn Off Wireless Radios

Tablets do not rely on mobile data quite as much as smartphones, but they still make heavy use of it. Wi-Fi is standard on virtually all tablets, and many also include access to 3G and/or 4G from a major mobile data carrier.

These radios suck power, however. A 3G/4G radio can have a negative impact on endurance if used often or if used in areas with a poor signal. The solution is to just turn the radio off.

Obviously, disabling 3G/4G will cut of mobile data access unless Wi-Fi is available, but this is a trade-off that will sometimes be worthwhile. Turning of Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth can further improve life, but the impact won’t be as drastic as turning of 3G/4G. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios are built to communicate over shorter ranges and consume less power as a result.

Dan Finnigan is CEO of Jobvite, a SaaS platform for the social web that companies use to find and hire people. You can follow him on Twitter at @DanFinnigan and read his blog — the Jobvite Blog.

About 120 million people now use LinkedIn, and 1 million more join every week. But how many users have a professional profile that’s actually attracting interest from hiring companies? Research my company has conducted shows that 87% of companies use LinkedIn for recruiting, so it’s a good bet that your next employer will look for talent there.

But how easy are you to find? With all those millions of profiles available, recruiters use specific search terms and network connections to narrow the number of prospects. However, it’s still worth taking the time to tune up your profile so that it pops. Furthermore, using the new “Apply with LinkedIn” plugin, you can also use link your profile to job applications on many company career sites.

Here are some tips to maximize the likelihood a recruiter with the perfect job contacts you first.

1. Profile Headlines: Simple and Direct

The headline is one line of text that appears underneath your name and in search results. In your headline, avoid overused buzzwords or over-the-top phrases (“game changer” or “change agent” are two that come to mind).

Your headline doesn’t have to include your job title, but it should be clear and concise. Use it to describe the qualities you can offer, and position yourself for relevant job opportunities without inflating your experience. There are even times when it’s smart to downgrade a title. Say that you are a VP at a small company, but would happily consider a director title at a larger company — it may be strategic to leave out the “VP” title in your headline.

2. Summary and Experience: Keep Your Story Tight

People will scan your profile just as they do a news story. When I worked as a reporter, we used the inverted pyramid method to structure a story, making sure all the important facts were stacked near the beginning. You too should answer the who, what, when, why and how in your profile summary section. Point to results and quantify your impact to render your record more concrete. If you’ve written a compelling summary, your audience will read on.

Underneath the summary is a section for specialties. This area frequently contains keywords used to make profiles findable. Optimize your profile for search engines (SEO), but not too much. The Google algorithm is too smart for keyword stuffing — and so are recruiters. If you include five lines of special skills in this section, chances are you won’t be great at any of them.

Interest will wane further down the page, so spend your time making the top sections of your profile (summary and recent experience) the most substantial. Although in most cases, not every job you’ve held needs a detailed description.

3. Company Name: What Does It Do?

Recruiters and hiring managers search by industry terms as well as skills. If your employers haven’t all been household names, describe those companies in a couple of words. That way, recruiters will know whether you’re right for a job in fashion or social gaming, for example. If a former employer has been purchased since you left, and no longer exists, use the name of the acquiring company instead.

Briefly describe ways in which that company was successful: for instance, a market share leader in a $6 billion industry, the leading patent holder or the highest-rated for customer service. If you worked in a very large company, focus on your particular division or project to help readers understand your experience better.

Bogus Twitter users do not have to steal accounts and tweet garbage about famous people to be menacing. Attackers use phony handles to Spam and scam unsuspecting users and send malicious links as well.

During Twitter’s “Red Carpet Era”, in October 2009 alone, the 140-character broadcasting service flagged twelve percent of all accounts as malicious and kicked them off, according to data from Dr. Paul Judge, a Social Network Security Research Team Leader at Barracuda Networks. Today, Twitter regularly flags two percent of accounts before giving them the boot. With legitimate users following and friending hundreds to thousands of others, a one-in-fifty chance of encountering an attacker is too great a risk to ignore.

“And what about the ones who are not caught?” asks Dr. Judge. The Barracuda expert estimates that as much as 70-percent of accounts are at least suspicious. Though the damage potential is disconcerting, the methods for spotting tainted Twitter connections are simple and effective.

Spotting Scammers

When a Twitter account follows a high number of accounts but does not have that many followers in return, it is probably a scammer who is trying to quickly build up followers by following many people and hoping that they will follow back. “A normal user follows the same number of people who follow them. But a scammer aggressively follows a lot of people,” Dr. Judge explains.

To address scammers, Twitter blocks users from following more than 2,000 people unless they have that many followers in return. Scammers try to beat this rule by following no more than, say, 1,100 to 1,200 users at a time while waiting for them to reciprocate. To stay under 2,000 follows and still build a following, scammers will unfollow all accounts that don’t eventually follow them and simply try following others. As a result, scammers who have not successfully built up a large number of followers may follow 1,100 people or so but have only 40 people following them.

The statistics of scammers who have been successful will be just the reverse. Though they started out with more friends in order to build up their followers, they now have plenty of followers. And because they need fewer friends to support that, they have unfollowed all but a few.

The green and red graph from Barracuda below illustrates this “Friend-Follower Delta”. The red area on the right represents accounts that Twitter cancelled for having too many friends and too few followers. The red area on the left represents accounts that had too many followers and not enough friends. Look for friend-follower numbers skewed to these extremes in order to pinpoint scammers.

Ferreting Out Fraudsters

“An account that tweets links and URLs with no text surrounding them is almost certainly a fraudster who is quickly distributing malicious URLs,” says Dr. Judge. Sometimes they include trending topics to ensure the tweet shows up in searches or a few words to convince people the link is an interesting article.

“In the end, it leads to a web exploit kit that attacks the user’s computer,” says Dr. Judge. Check a user’s recent tweets; if they fit this description, run!

Expert, influencer, thought leader, guru — regardless of which of these terms you identify with, Facebook can help to show off your expertise and share useful content with your friends.

Public relations tacticians know that one way to build credibility is by sharing relevant information, such as interesting news clips, information about events you’re attending, speaking engagements, press mentions, awards and blog posts, with the people who matter.

Maybe you’re a real whiz in a particular subject, like baseball statistics, personal bankruptcy law or credit default swaps. Facebook is a great platform to express your unique point of view.

Following are a few Facebook features that can help issue experts get the most out of their social networking presence.

Polls

You know the saying, “Content is king?” On Facebook, engagement rules the day. The polls feature is a great way to stay connected to your community and hear what they have to say.

Questions

Experts can take advantage of the same benefits that Facebook questions offer major brands and businesses; the ability to tap into the online opinions and recommendations of friends. Facebook questions is also free, putting the power of market research directly into the hands of an expert.

It’s something we don’t like to admit very often is it? No matter how great of a freelancer we are, no matter how fantastic your contracts and vetting process is, you’ll ultimately end up with a client you feel that you can no longer work with. Hopefully, you’ve protected yourself so that these occurrences are rare, but no matter how rare, they’re never easy nor pretty.

As well as I think my personal vetting process has been, I’ve had some clients who’ve been unreasonable, demanding, and some have been downright crookish. I’ve had everything from a client demanding extra free work to the client who didn’t read the contract, demanded non-refundable deposits back and told me they hoped karma’s a you-know-what to me.

While a lot of this stuff was due to shortcomings on my end. I should’ve watched the designer’s mockups and caught the “extras” the clients were putting in, I shouldn’t have made an exception to a business rule I have, you matter how patient you are, no matter how hard you try to work with your client, sometimes it’s unavoidable. You have to part ways.

There have been several times that I’ve been unsure of whether I should finally fire the client and move on. Some of my “worst” first clients have turned out to become fantastic ones in the long run. So when should you decide to fire that client or continue working with them (and hopefully educating them so it’s easier the next time)?

Rude, Immoral, or Downright Criminal Behavior

There are certain times where I never hesitate to fire a client or to refuse a potential client. You should never stand for anyone who treats you with anything less than respect. You are a professional business owner, no matter what your age, and you should expect to be treated as one. I’d give the client a warning or two, but after that I’d refuse to work or even respond to their emails. There are too many nice clients in the world for you to have to work with the jerks.

Is the client being immoral? Are they demanding free work or extra revisions? Do they want work down on something you’re morally against? (Be it religious, politics or porn?) One of the major reasons people go into freelance is so they can choose what kind of work they can do. At one of my old jobs, I was forced to do work for clients that I was politically and morally, against. I promised myself I would never compromise on my values as a freelancer, and neither should you.

If the project is downright illegal, don’t even think twice about turning that one down. You don’t want the CIA kicking down your front door, do you?

Will They Agree to Pay a PIA Fee?

A fellow business owner, who actually runs a medium size agency, gave me some great advice once. They mentioned that if I found myself dealing with a client that I was unsure about, so raise my prices until it made me eager to work on the project, or to turn them down. This goes for working with the client as well. If you think the client is going to be a big pain, charge them double or triple fees. I’ve actually had clients come to me telling me that they’re very demanding, so make sure to charge extra to anticipate extra work (a nice way of calling the PIA fee).

If getting extra money for dealing with a bad client sounds good to you, go ahead and do it. If you have a short fuse though, it’s best to skip the client and the potential for things to turn sour and move on.

Why pay Apple $69.99 when you can build your own Lion install drive for the App Store purchase price of $29.99 — plus the cost of an inexpensive thumb drive. Here’s how to create a full install on a drive, not just the recovery disk that we recently posted about.

You’ll need a copy of the OS X Lion installer. If you saved a copy when you first installed Lion, great. If not, you’ll need to re-download it from the Mac App Store.

To do so, launch the App Store and option-click the Purchases tab. An “Install” button should appear next to Lion. Click it to re-download the installer. You can use this option-click-Purchases trick to re-download any purchase, not just Lion.

Once the 3.74-GB installer finishes downloading, go to your Applications folder to find the installer itself. It is called Install Mac OS X Lion. Right-click (or Control-click) the installer and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual pop-up. A new Finder browser window opens, showing the normally hidden material inside the installer bundle.

Navigate to Contents > SharedSupport. There you'll find a disk image called InstallESD.dmg.

Open a new Finder window with Command-N (File > New Finder Window). Navigate to /Applications/Utilities and launch DiskUtility.

Attach a thumb drive to your Mac that is at least 4GB 8GB in size. (Update: some readers say 4GB isn’t enough. As you can see, I used a 16GB drive) Prepare it for use by creating a single HFS+ partition. Select the drive (e.g. SanDisk Ultra) in the left hand column. Drives are listed first with their partitions listed after them, each partition indented slightly.

With this drive selected, click the Partition tab and choose Partition Layout > 1 Partition. Choose Format > Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

Click the Options button at the bottom-right of the partition layout. Select GUID Partition Table.

Click Apply. Disk Utility asks you to confirm. Click Partition. Wait as it unmounts, partitions, and remounts your disk.

Next, select the new partition (Untitled 1 by default). Click the Restore tab.

Click Install next to the source field. Drag InstallESD.dmg into the file-open window and click Open. Drag Untitled 1 from the left column to the destination field. Click Restore and agree to Erase the drive and replace it with the contents of InstallESD.dmg. You may have to authenticate as an administrator.

Wait. It will take some time for the drive to be written. Once it’s done, eject it, label it clearly, and put it away for a rainy day.

Meanwhile, go out and spend the $40 you just saved wisely.

Photo by Avolore

It’s back-to-school time! With only a few weeks left until the unofficial end of summer, it’s time to review some green basics for going back to class as eco-friendly as possible. I’ve got one kiddo in elementary school, and there’s a lot of “stuff” needed to get him back to school, between the supply list required by the school and the obligatory clothing, shoes, backpacks, lunch gear and so on. If you want to be as eco-friendly and low-consumption as possible, here are some tips to get you started.

• Look before you leap. Before hitting the stores, take a look at what you already have. Comparing my son’s supply list to my office supply drawers, I found that I already had plenty of new crayons, a pencil box and several other required items I had scooped up on clearance last year knowing they’d be needed. I just had to make a list of the required items we didn’t have, roughly half the total list. Next up was the closet — it’s still going to be hot here in Texas for a long time after school starts, so taking an inventory of my son’s clothes revealed all we really need is a few newer, non-stained T-shirts, some new sneakers and a new backpack. We purchased fresh lunch supplies last spring at Reuseit.com, so we’re good to go on that front.
• Time to shop! Almost half of the money spent on back to school shopping goes to buying clothes, but it’s extremely easy to cut the cost. Hand-me-downs, children’s resale shops and consignment sales are a great place to get started — children often outgrown clothing faster than they can damage it, so it’s often pretty easy to find like-new clothes at a fraction of the cost of new ones. If you do buy new, look for well-made, high-quality items made from more sustainable fabrics like organic cotton or bamboo. For school supplies, look for items made from recycled materials, and choose only what you need. Stick to the list!
• Watch your paper usage. For elementary schools, paper is still the norm rather than email or the Internet. Each year, 240 pounds of waste are generated per student! Buy notebooks and loose-leaf paper with the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled content possible, and make sure it is processed chlorine free (PCF). Use the paper until it screams for mercy — print on both sides of the paper, use paper already printed on one side for drafts and notes, and fill notebooks from cover to cover before switching to a new one.



View the full article on Modern*Simplicity

“Back-to-School Tips for the Elementary Crowd”

]]> http://trutricks.com/2011/08/back-to-school-tips-for-the-elementary-crowd/feed/ 0 http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-integrate-google-into-your-wordpress-site/ http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-integrate-google-into-your-wordpress-site/#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2011 03:54:01 +0000 TruTricks - Brian http://trutricks.com/?p=2825 Already using Google+? Follow Mashable’s Pete Cashmore for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.



This month’s hot topic has been, without a doubt, Google+. Whether the new social service from the world’s largest search company will be a “Facebook killer” remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain: This is one social network you don’t want to ignore.

When it comes to getting found, Google+ is fast becoming a great asset for bloggers and content producers thanks to its ever-expanding user base and simple sharing tools. In this post, we’ll show you a few ways to start spreading a little of that Google+ love on your WordPress-powered website.

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Display Your Google+ Profile Information

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Software developer John Henson from PlusDevs has developed a handy, easy to use WordPress widget that displays your Google+ profile on your blog. The setup is quick and simple: Install the plug-in and drag the widget into your sidebar. Just fill out…
Read More →

]]> Already using Google+? Follow Mashable’s Pete Cashmore for the latest about the platform’s new features, tips and tricks as well as our top social media and technology updates.



This month’s hot topic has been, without a doubt, Google+. Whether the new social service from the world’s largest search company will be a “Facebook killer” remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain: This is one social network you don’t want to ignore.

When it comes to getting found, Google+ is fast becoming a great asset for bloggers and content producers thanks to its ever-expanding user base and simple sharing tools. In this post, we’ll show you a few ways to start spreading a little of that Google+ love on your WordPress-powered website.

---

Display Your Google+ Profile Information

---

Software developer John Henson from PlusDevs has developed a handy, easy to use WordPress widget that displays your Google+ profile on your blog. The setup is quick and simple: Install the plug-in and drag the widget into your sidebar. Just fill out the form and you’re done.

You can also incorporate the widget into your template with only a few lines of PHP code, giving you the flexibility to place it anywhere within your layout.

You can learn more about the widget in the official blog post or jump straight to the code on GitHub.

Unofficial Google+ user tracking site SocialStatistics.com also offers an embeddable Google+ widget. Simply add your profile to their database and grab the widget code from your page on their site.




View the full article on Mashable!

“HOW TO: Integrate Google+ Into Your WordPress Site”

]]> http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-integrate-google-into-your-wordpress-site/feed/ 0 http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-stop-getting-rejected-as-a-freelance-writer/ http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-stop-getting-rejected-as-a-freelance-writer/#comments Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:33:00 +0000 TruTricks - Brian http://trutricks.com/?p=2821 Source: “How to Stop Getting Rejected as a Freelance Writer”



Credit: feverpitch on Photodune

In my early days of freelance writing, I thought long and hard about rejection. My articles were getting rejected, and I was mad. I knew if my articles get rejected, I won’t make money. On the other hand, when they are accepted, I make money. Freelance writing is really that simple.

So I began my quest to reduce rejection and increase acceptance. I wrote and read and tweaked until my articles slowly started getting accepted.

It was hard at first, but as I got accepted more and more, I figured out what I was doing right. Once I figured out the path to getting articles accepted, almost all of them were accepted. And of course, when they are accepted, I make money. The tips below are the things I have learned from repeated attempts at freelance writing. Follow them, and I guarantee your articles will get accepted more and rejected less.

Understand Rejection

Every freelance writer has been rejected one time…
Read More →

]]> Source: “How to Stop Getting Rejected as a Freelance Writer”



Credit: feverpitch on Photodune

In my early days of freelance writing, I thought long and hard about rejection. My articles were getting rejected, and I was mad. I knew if my articles get rejected, I won’t make money. On the other hand, when they are accepted, I make money. Freelance writing is really that simple.

So I began my quest to reduce rejection and increase acceptance. I wrote and read and tweaked until my articles slowly started getting accepted.

It was hard at first, but as I got accepted more and more, I figured out what I was doing right. Once I figured out the path to getting articles accepted, almost all of them were accepted. And of course, when they are accepted, I make money. The tips below are the things I have learned from repeated attempts at freelance writing. Follow them, and I guarantee your articles will get accepted more and rejected less.

Understand Rejection

Every freelance writer has been rejected one time or another. For example, my first article was rejected seven times before it was accepted. Remember that rejection is common. Every writer I know has their own rejection stories.

Why do articles get rejected? To answer this question we need to walk in a publisher’s shoes.

Publishers have numerous writers throwing articles into their faces. If you had to read through a huge amount of articles daily, would you have patience for errors? Would you let anything that isn’t great get published?

No. This is why publishers reject more articles than they accept. To get accepted, you need to produce nothing less than a great, error-free article.

The Importance of Editing

Edit, then edit some more. It is often the little things that prevent an article from becoming accepted.

I like to think of editing in regards to Richard Carlson’s 90-10 rule. 90 percent of your article may be great, but if 10 percent is mediocre or filled with errors, publishers will focus on that 10 percent. Most of the time, 10 percent or even 5 percent of poor writing leads to rejection.

To prevent rejection your article has to be edited to the period. First make sure you have perfect spelling and grammar. Next, eliminate typos. Then, eliminate wordy sentences. Lastly, make sure your article has structure and focus.

Editing successfully requires looking through your articles multiple times. Pay attention to detail every time you edit. I find reading an article out loud is the best way to edit, because it is easier to see mistakes. You can also tell if a sentence is worded poorly.




View the full article on Freelance Switch

“How to Stop Getting Rejected as a Freelance Writer”

]]> http://trutricks.com/2011/07/how-to-stop-getting-rejected-as-a-freelance-writer/feed/ 0