There are a lot of great plugins that can help you customize and awesomize your WordPress site. After lots of research and client work, I’ve compiled a list of our most used plugins and what they do.

Before we get started, you should know the fine print. While it may be tempting to find and install of lot of plugins that do all sorts of really cool stuff, you should know that the plugin’s code needs to be maintained through WordPress updates.  If the plugin’s developer stops upgrading their code, you may find the plugin doesn’t work the next time you upgrade WordPress.  (When in doubt ask for help).

I’ve listed WordPress Plugins that I like below.

Catalyst Template

Ok, so Catalyst isn’t really a plugin, but it’s a great template.  I explain why I love it so much in detail here, but the short story is it allows you can update your site’s design without knowing programming and it’s got wicked search engine optimization built in. Win!

Plugin Central

Plugin Central allows you to install your plugins in batches.  If the Plugins are listed in the WordPress Plugin directory all you need is the names of the plugins in a list format.  Once you enter the list, Plugin Central will find and install the plugins for you. This saves a whole bunch of time if you install a lot of Plugins (which I do).

Better Tag Cloud

As the name says, Better Tag Cloud is a superior alternative to the default tag cloud.  There are cool configurable options that you can define like the difference in sizes based on how popular a tag is, whether or not to include categories in the cloud and formatting options.

Disqus Comment System

The default WordPress Comment System isn’t very flexible, so 3rd party systems like Disqus have become very popular.  Disqus allows for some great extensions to comments such as threaded commenting,

What’s great about Disqus is if your blog reader already has a Disqus account, they can make comments on your blog and it will be associated with the account.  There are also some cool customizations you can do with Disqus.

Google Analyticator

You need Google Analytics on every page of your site so it can track effectively.  With Google Analyticator this is easy.  All you have to do is put in the unique code from Google Analytics for your website and Google Analyticator takes care of the rest.

A feature I really love about this tool is you can set tracking to exclude administrators.  This allows you to get true visitor analytics that aren’t skewed by the longer periods of time that site admins typically spend on the site.

Google Maps Anywhere

Google Maps Anywhere adds a nifty little button to your WordPress Page and Post editor to easily embed Google Maps into your content.  This particularly useful if you run events or have a office location.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps generates a sitemap made especially for search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo.  A sitemap allows the search engines to see the complete structure of your site, making it easier for them to index you (this is good).  This plugin also notifies the search engines when you have new content so they know to come and reindex you (woot!).

Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a paid plugin but worth every little penny.  Starting from $39 for a single site licence, this plugin lets you create input forms with custom feeds for your website without a scrap of programming.  It’s all drag and drop.

I’ve used this plugin for nearly 2 years to collect workshop registrations.  Once the participant finishes with the registration form, I set Gravity Forms to send them to the payment page.  Gravity Forms then emails me the registration information.

I wish all plugins were made by this company, it’s fabulous.

Login LockDown

So I got my site hacked once and it started to get banned from search engines because there was spammy code in it.  Since then I never use the default admin account called “admin”, I make sure my passwords are at least 8 characters long and finally, I installed Login LockDown.

Login LockDown allows you to set how many times you attempt to login (default 3) before your account gets locked out (default 60 minutes).  It’s a great extra layer of security to have.

MailChimp List Subscribe Form

A plugin that helps you quickly and easily set up a Mailchimp subscribe form on your website.  The plugin settings let you configure how the subscribe form will look on your site and adds a simple widget for you to drag into your sidebar.

Outbrain

Outbrain has 2 main features.  The feature this plugin adds is suggested posts at the bottom of your blog post (you’ll see it at the bottom of this post).  This encourages your reader to stay on your blog for longer.  The other is a widget for Popular Posts.

Once you register with Outbrain you also get access to analytics to how many clicks you get on suggested posts.

SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images makes sure that all your images are search engine optimized based on the title of your post or page and the name of the image.  Once it’s installed, it does all the work for you.

SexyBookmarks

You’ve probably seen SexyBookmarks on blogs you’ve visited. You’ll also see it on this blog. It adds a row of social platform buttons at the end of your blog posts and encouraging your readers to share it via cute messages like “Sharing is Sexy!” or “Share the Knowledge”.  You can choose the buttons you want to display and select from 8 messages you would like to be shown.  You can also control how the message will be sent through Twitter and which URL shortener (like Bit.ly) to use.

Shockingly Simple Favicon

Favicons are the icons that show in your browser window beside the website address.  Customizing them can add a nice little touch to your website. Shockingly Simple Favicon widget makes it easy for you to change your website’s Favicon without having to get technical.

Social Media Widget

Social Media Widget is one of my favourite plugins.  It creates a widget that you can drag onto your sidebar (or any other widget area) and has a large list of Social Networks already plugged into it.   All you have to do is add the link to your account and you are good to go.  What’s great about this plugin is that you can select from 4 default icon types or upload your own to customize your look based on your brand.  You can also select what size you want the icon to be and how you want the icon to react when someone points at it – change size, change transparency etc.

TinyMCE Advanced

TinyMCE Advanced gives your WordPress Text Editor more wordprocessor type buttons.  This will allow you to change your formatting much easier without knowing HTML.  You can configure what buttons you want to show in the settings for the plugin.

I also recommend turning on the setting “Stop removing the <p> and <br> tags when saving and show them in the HTML editor for your own sanity.

TweetMeme Retweet Button

TweetMeme Retweet Button adds the popular Retweet button to you pages and posts.  You can figure some of the behaviour of the button and choose your URL shortener.

Twitter Widget Pro

This plugin allows you to show the last few tweets and add it to an widget area.  You can see the widget in action in my footer.

Vaultpress

Vaultpress is another paid plugin that is worth the money.  It automatically backs up your entire WordPress installation so if anything goes wrong you are covered.  You just install it and it does all the work.  Right now Vaultpress is in beta and you have to apply to get it.  I recommend applying and then Tweeting about it a few times including their name so they see it.

Video Sidebar Widgets

Video Sidebar Widgets adds a widget to add Youtube, Vimeo and other videos easily to your sidebar.

Viper’s Video Quicktags

Viper’s Video Quicktags video buttons to the page and post editor for Youtube, Google Video, Vimeo, Viddler and others.  The button allows you to easily embed a video into any page or post with a couple of clicks.

WP Email Guard

WP Email Guard is a godsend that will protect any email address on your website from becoming the target of Spam.  Hooray!

What others could you use?

Reply in the comments about what plugins you use and what they do or what you functionality you would love to add to your site.

Building your web presence takes time and a bit of consistent effort.  The last thing that you want it to use software that makes life more difficult for you.  You need to be able to update your website yourself, you want to be able to send out email marketing quickly and easily.  Everything you use should help you get the job done quickly.

When choosing a service to recommend, my criteria is:

• Easy to use so the business owner can be independent;
• Affordable (free is also good);
• Have good customer service and support

The following resources all met this criteria.

Where to buy your .com or .ca domain

Buy your domains from Godaddy.  They have the cheapest domains around and are easy to point and forward meaning you can use a different host (which I recommend and explain in the next point).

Godaddy will try to get you to buy a bunch of other stuff as you go through their check out.  Most of it is unnecessary.  Just skip past saying “No Thanks” until you can pay.

The best thing about Godaddy is you can always get coupon codes for discounts at Fat Wallet.  Simply go to the final page and apply some of the codes until you get the best deal.

Hosting

A host is the home for your website files to live.  There are lots of hosts out there and with my clients have tried many of them.  The host that is by far the best is InMotion Hosting.  They have excellent customer service, very reliable servers and they don’t charge extra for stuff like unlimited email (which a host like Godaddy does).

You can start with the business class hosting package Launch which is $84 a year.

WordPress Website

WordPress is the best system to put your website on.  It is an extremely flexible and scalable system that will allow your website to grow and change with you.  You can easily add static pages, blog posts, pictures, videos and almost anything else you would like without requiring assistance from a Web Developer.

Once you have your hosting, WordPress is installed on it.  Then you need a template.  A good WordPress developer will charge you about $3000 to build you a WordPress template.  There are lots of pre-built templates around, but in most cases, they are not worth purchasing as they can cause a lot of headaches and extra money to get them customized to your liking.

The best template around is Catalyst.  The Personal Edition is a bargain at $97 and includes access to the support forums.  It’s an extremely flexible template and allows you to manage a lot of the design elements yourself.  What this means is once it’s set up, if you decide to change your web banner for example, you can without needing to get a web developer to do it for you.  It’s extremely flexible.

I absolutely recommend having someone set this up for you initially if you aren’t extremely technical or don’t want to spend 60+ hours learning WordPress and the Catalyst theme.  My team can do this for you and then train you how to use it.  Email me this interests you.

Email Marketing

I love Mailchimp.  It’s easy to use and best of all, it’s free until you have 2000 subscribers to your email list.  Free is great.

You can set up different lists for different functions – for example you can have a general list that includes everyone and you can have a list for free resource sign ups from your website that automatically sends the free resource after someone enters their information.

Customizing Your Facebook Page

Fan Page Engine is a great tool that allows you to easily set up a custom landing page for your Facebook Page.  I recommend purchasing the Unlimited Fanpage Engine for the one time fee of $67 to get access to the best templates.

Customizing Your Twitter Page background

For a beautiful custom Twitter background go to Twitrbackgrounds.com.  They will make a branded background for $89.  Their work is excellent and they will get your design to you very quickly.

What tools do you use and recommend?

I’d love to hear what you love to use and why, so please add a comment and share it.

There’s been a lot of controversy about online privacy lately, especially with Google and Facebook making major changes that affect privacy and automatically signing members up without warning.  As social media makes our lives more public, the responsibility for protecting your privacy and identity is left in your hands.  There are 6 ways you can start to protect your privacy online.

1. Read the Terms, Conditions and Privacy Policies When You Sign Up to Websites

Every website has its own terms and conditions.  Most people don’t read these terms and are shocked when they find out something they didn’t know.  If you sign up to a social website where you’re required to give your personal information, spend 5 minutes reading the terms and conditions and find out what you are agreeing to and whether you are comfortable with it.

If you’re looking for something “light” to read this summer, check out:

• Facebook’s Terms and Conditions
• Facebook’s Privacy Policy
• Twitter’s Terms
• Twitter’s Privacy Policy
• Linkedin’s User Policy
• Linkedin’s Privacy Policy
• YouTube’s Terms and Conditions
• YouTube’s Privacy Policy

2. Regularly Review the Privacy Settings

Don’t assume the default privacy settings on any website will protect your private information.  Make a habit of regularly reviewing the settings.  It’s good practice to check out your settings after any site changes. If you notice anything different on the site, use it as a reminder to check your privacy settings.

3. Protect Your Birthday

38% of social media users post their full birthday, including the year.  Here’s another scary figure – 1.7 million US households reported they experienced online identity theft.  It’s much easier for someone to steal your identity if they know your birthday.  To protect your privacy, you can set your birthday to only show the day and month, or hide it all together.

4. Be Wary of Location-Specific Applications or Sharing Your Travel Plans

Location-based mobile applications such as Foursquare allow you to share your location with your friends and can be fun, but they also let people know when you aren’t home.  Likewise, sharing your vacation plans on public sites gives thieves the exact times you’ll be away from your home.  Even though you may be excited about your trip, it’s better to share the pictures when you get back. Otherwise, I hope you have insurance!

5. Avoid Giving Personal Information When Prompted by Email

Scammers use bogus emails to prompt you to change your information or reenter your passwords to popular sites – or even your bank.  None of these sites or institutions will ever send you an unsolicited email asking you to reset your password or confirm any personal information.

6. Change Your Password Regularly

Be honest with me … when was the last time you changed your password on any site?  Do you use the same password on every site you use?  Have you shared your password with anyone?  With so many websites, passwords, pins and security questions, it can be difficult to remember them all, but it is no excuse for not managing them responsibly.  Luckily, there is help, you can download a nifty little application that will store you passwords for you securely.

(Photo provided by Darwin Bell on Flickr)

A couple of years ago I did a 6 week creative writing workshop with Chris Fraser.  Each session, I would turn up to her house which smelt like freshly baked cookies or some other delicious treat and during the break we would feast.  The homemade baking was a nice touch that I really appreciated.

When I started running my workshops, I wanted to do something similar.  My first few workshops were too busy for me to bake, but the last two have included homemade baking (thanks to help from my friend Michelle Johnston) and the response has been fantastic – people love it.  In fact, the next day people were talking about the cookies and banana bread on Facebook and Twitter.

My last group requested I share the Banana Bread recipe because it’s sooooo good (the best I’ve ever tasted), especially when it’s still warm and gooey.  So enjoy.  Of course you could always come to a workshop and sample it there.

The Best Chocolate Chip Banana Bread Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cups of All Purpose Flour
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
3 bananas mashed
1/2 cup of butter softened
2 eggs
1 cup of chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 350
2. Combine and mix all ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
3. Place batter in a greased bread pan.
4. Bake for 40 – 50 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in centre comes out clean (mine took about 60 minutes but I use a rubber baking pan).
5. Cool for 10 minutes then remove from pan.  Complete cooling on wire rack.

Makes one big delicious loaf!

While I was researching this article, I visited a section of Facebook’s blog that I call “Facebook Purgatory”. This is where the poor souls who have had their accounts disabled go to desperately plead with to Facebook to reinstate their accounts. Most have no idea why their account has been disabled, and some have been waiting for weeks without a response from Facebook about whether their accounts would be reenabled. Facebook Purgatory is a sad place and I hope you never end up there.

Since Facebook is a private company they can do what they like with their site. They set their terms and conditions, and if you breach them they choose if and when they will reinstate it. The best defense you have is to play within their rules, otherwise you risk losing your friends, photos, videos, notes and any other data you have shared.

There are at least 12 ways you can get your Facebook account disabled:

1. Using Your Personal Profile for Business Purposes

Facebook wants you to use the Page profiles for business and keep your personal profile just that – personal. They state “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain.” Therefore promoting your products and services through your personal profile could get you thrown out.

2. Using a Fake Name

Facebook wants to interact with real people and doesn’t tolerate fake names, business names or abbreviations (such as using one letter as your last name) on a personal profile.

3. Changing Your Name Too Often

Most people change their names very few times, if at all, in their lifetime. Facebook uses multiple name changes to flag people who are breaking the “fake name” clause. If you legitimately change your name, you have nothing to worry about.

4. Sending Too Many Friend Requests in a Short Period of Time

It seems counter-intuitive that a social networking tool would limit how you can add friends, but they do. After you initially join and upload your address books, they think your friends should grow organically and slowly. So how many friends are safe to add per day? They don’t share this useful information with us, but I would suggest adding no more than 20 friends a day.

Whatever you do, never ignore messages from Facebook that warn you to slow down on adding friends. If you receive a message from Facebook, don’t add any new friends for a couple of weeks.

5.Overuse of Your Inbox

It seems the Inbox feature is not your average mail client. Facebook doesn’t want users sending a lot of bulk messages from the inbox. You can only send a message to a maximum of 20 people. If you send the same message to multiple groups of 20 people, or send bulk messages often, you may get flagged as a spammer.

6. Being Reported for Spam

Each message you send includes a “report as spam” button. When someone clicks this button, Facebook reviews the message (and probably all of your other activities) to determine whether or not they consider it spam. All promotions that occur outside of a Business Page could be considered spam. I’m going to share a dirty little secret here: some people would rather hit the “Report as Spam” button than ask you not to send them information or unfriend you. It’s easier and anonymous. Be conscious of what you send, since you are always at risk of someone reporting you.

7. Engaging in Suspicious Behaviour After Time Away

If you haven’t used Facebook for a while (say for over a month), there might be a backlog of friend requests to process. From there it seems natural that you to want to message some people and add some other new friends. However, people in Facebook Purgatory report being banned from Facebook after a hiatus because they added too many new friends or sent too many messages. Remember to space out your activities.

8. Resending the Same Message to Your Friends, Event or Group Members

Facebook doesn’t like duplicate messages – they think it’s Spam. This means resending a message as a reminder to your friends, event invitees or to group members is a big no-no. Instead, Facebook recommends adding more people as administrators to an event or group. The extra administrators can send messages to their friends, rather than having you resend the same messages to the same people. Facebook has automatic flags that notify them of this behavior. If they check your message and see that it’s for “commercial gain”, you can kiss your account goodbye.

9. Using Inbox Messages to Chat

Facebook says, “The inbox functionality is not intended for the purpose of having live conversations with people. If you would like to do this, we recommend using the Facebook chat feature.” Multiple messages to the same person in a short period of time could be classified as Spam.

10. Multiple People Block You

Each profile has an option to “report/block this person.” While Facebook would regard the occasional block as part of human relationships (like bad breakups), flags go up if the number of people blocking you is abnormally high, or if you are blocked a lot in a short period of time.

11. You are Reported

The report part of “report/block this person” function prompts the user to give a reason for their report. Reasons include nudity or pornography, fake profiles, racist/hate speech, threatening behavior and unwanted contact. Unwanted contact is pretty vague. Facebook will review any report and look at your activity to see if it’s legitimate. If you’re using your personal profile for business promotions and you are reported, your account will be disabled.

12. Using Faulty or Intensive 3rd Party Applications to Access Facebook

You can access Facebook via different websites or applications such as mobile clients. These are not developed by Facebook, but by 3rd party developers, and interact with Facebook using your credentials. If they have been poorly developed, or they refresh often (for example every 5 minutes), Facebook may see this as spammy behaviour and suspend your account. A big culprit seems to be SkyBook, a Facebook client for Windows Mobile so avoid that one. Limit how you connect to Facebook by using their website and one trusted mobile application.

If your Account is Disabled

If you ever have your account disabled, visit http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=disabled to request your account is reinstated. Be patient, multiple requests are reported to slow the process down and Facebook is notorious for taking their time to review disabled accounts.

To learn more about how to protect your Facebook account, check out: Facebook Business Breakthroughs.

When I was a teenager, my friends hated McDonalds pickles. Pickles aren’t really an Aussie thing. Or maybe they just aren’t a teenager thing. They would pick them out of their burgers and throw them against the wall to see who could get their pickle to stick for the longest.

Automated Direct Messages (auto DMs) are like pickles on Twitter, no one really likes them, yet everyone is throwing them against the wall to see what sticks.  In case you don’t know, they are generic little messages sent automatically to you after you follow someone on Twitter. They generally say something like “Hi, thanks for following me. This is what I do. You can also check out my website/blog/facebook”. People send them in hope that, if enough people receive it, someone, somewhere will visit the website/blog/facebook page.

Are Automated Direct Messages Effective?

I’ve very rarely read and never responded to an auto DM.  Since they really aren’t personally sent to me, I categorize them as SPAM. If anything, the only action I’m likely to take from an auto DM is to unfollow someone if the message has made enough of a case that a relationship between us isn’t right (for example they show they are a Spammer).

To figure out if Auto DMs are effective, I did a little research.

• I looked at 40 automated direct messages with a link from bit.ly that have been sent to me in the last couple of weeks.
• I recorded the number of followers the sender had.
• I looked at the number of clicks for that Auto DM link on bit.ly’s statistics and subtracted any links not from Twitter, leaving on any clicks from external Twitter clients for the benefit of doubt.
• I removed any clicks that were from Tweets and not Auto DMs.

There are elements that I couldn’t account for like:

• If the Auto DM was set up at the beginning of the Twitter account meaning every follower actually received the message.
• How many people unfollowed as a result of the Auto DM.
• If there is a difference in response between Auto DMs response without link or that don’t use a URL shortener.

Obviously it’s not an exact science, but it does allow you to see some patterns.  For example the people who only used the link in Auto DMs had zero URL clicks.

Based on my findings the average click-through on direct messages is 0.8%.

My in-home physicist worked out that the error margin for my little study was 0.8. Meaning that the best case scenario for a click-through on a Automated Direct Message is 1.6%.

Is 0.8% effective? Personally, I think not.  Why bother with something so ineffective that just labels you as a Spammer?  But if you disagree with me and still want to use them, here are some best practices for making the most of your auto direct messages that will hopefully lower the annoyance rate.

Auto Direct Message Best Practices

1. Understand the function of an auto direct message

The point of the direct message isn’t to thank someone for becoming a fan – it’s meaningless, everyone does it. Instead you should try to intrigue your follower enough to check your Bio and Tweets more carefully (ideally liking what they see and adding you to a list) or to build some trust and credibility, which hopefully has the same result.

2. Be Original

If you say something different, you have a chance of catching someone’s attention and improving your response rate. Almost every Auto DM I’ve seen tries too hard, and is about the sender instead of the follower.  Be in service instead of asking for something from your follower so early in the relationship.  Send your best tip – one that got a great response when you tweeted it.  Remember, at this stage you aren’t trying to sell anything but your point of view. Showcase that and give them an opportunity to see what you are made of.

Here are 2 Auto DMs I really liked:

This is a great example of being in service, rather than asking for something early in the relationship. Of course it only works if they actually follow up. If you offer something, make sure you deliver.  With this Tweet, there is an added problem that people can only reply to a Direct Message if the receiver is following them already, so unless this guy auto follows everyone back, people can’t actually DM him, making this tweet pointless.

I would change it to:

“I’d love to tweet to my followers about your business. Send me a tweet telling me what to say and I’ll share it sometime this week.”

This Auto DM is brilliant for 2 reasons – it’s another example of being in service to your follower and it aligns the reader to position the sender in the same category as the other well known bloggers. I would change it to:

“For more blogging tips check out @problogger, @patflynn and @johnhaydon. Send me your blogging questions and I’ll tweet about them.”

Top 7 Auto Direct Message Mistakes

1. Trying to sell or trying to get someone into your sales cycle. It’s too early in the relationship.
2. Trying to get them to visit your website, join your Facebook fanpage or download something.
3. Using URL shorteners. There are lots of warnings about people’s accounts being hijacked from links in Direct Messages. If you must add a link, use the proper URL.
4. Using TrueTwit Validation. No one wants to validate themselves for you, it’s obnoxious.
5. Pretending it’s not a Auto DM. Avoid saying something generic like – nice profile.
6. Asking for a DM. Unless you are following them, they can’t send you a DM.
7. Thanking people for following – it’s a waste of space. Use it more productively.

A good profile picture is essential for anyone using social networking as a business activity. Your profile picture is the first thing people see on social networking sites like Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. The photo helps people make decisions about you – whether to add you, what type of person you are and even whether to do business with you, making it an important representation of you and your brand.

So what are the most common mistakes people make with profile photos? Check out the 7 Deadly Sins of Profile Photos:

1. Your photo is inappropriate

Avoid using profile photos that are obviously taken in social settings – bars, the beach, family BBQs or anywhere you are obviously drinking. You might like the photo of yourself – that’s great share it with friends and family, not your business connections.  Avoid using photos of groups or that have more than 1 person doesn’t help people get a sense of you if they don’t know you already.

2. Your photo tells a different story from your profile

Your photo should represent you perfectly to your target audience and compliment what your profile says. Unfortunately, even though it might seem like common sense, I see lots of profile photos that are incongruent with the profile itself.

3. You don’t look your best

Hair, clothes and lighting all make important contributions to your profile photo. Know what your colour suits you best because the last thing you want is a photo where you look washed out. I mistakenly wore yellow to a photo shoot only to find out, yellow was not my colour – the entire set are unusable. Avoid patterns and wear a colour that makes you feel confident.

4. Your Photo isn’t actually photo

This one is my pet peeve. I don’t understand how people can think pictures of their pets or children, cartoons, wads of cash or sunsets represent them favourably for business purposes. They don’t. Don’t do it.

5. Your Photo isn’t current

You might think you look better in a photo 10 years ago because you look thinner and younger, but do you want your first impression with someone to have them thinking about how you lied about how you look. Be authentic and proud of who you are now.

6. The background ruins the photo

If the background is over powering the photo, it’s time to get a new headshot. I got photos with multiple backgrounds so I could use them however I wanted. If in doubt, go with white because you can use it on websites, social networking sites and promotional materials without having to worry that the background clashes with the color scheme of the site.

7. You aren’t smiling

It’s shocking how many people don’t smile on their profile pictures making them look unfriendly, too serious or just plain creepy – would you want to connect with someone like that? Your smile tells people you are approachable, open and confident.

Have your photo professionally taken

Many people skimp out on getting photos taken professionally – either because they don’t feel good about how they look or they don’t want to spend the money and figure they can do it themselves.  Your photographer will make sure that you look your best by using appropriate lighting and backgrounds while making suggestions about your body language and positioning.

A good photo on your social networks will help people connect with you and allow them to recognize you when they meet you in person being well worth the investment.

If you are in Toronto and need a headshot, you should check out Donna Santos. My good friend and uber Hippy Marketer, Tad Hargrave is hosting a headshot day with Donna – check out the details here.

Recently Facebook and Yahoo formed a partnership of sorts and with it came an exciting new feature – the ability to download your friends email addresses.  If you don’t have a Yahoo Mail account, you can sign up here.

This is great for businesses owners because it means we can get our connections off Facebook and into our Address Books allowing us to protect our network in the unlikely event that our Facebook account is banned for some reason, or Facebook stops becoming the social network of choice.

Now remember, with great power comes great responsibility – so don’t add these people to your mailing list without getting their permission first.

Import Your Contacts From Facebook

1. Go to address.yahoo.com and log in to your Yahoo account.
2. Select “Import Now”.



3. Select the Facebook icon.  If you aren’t already signed into Facebook, you may be prompted to log in.



4. Allow the Yahoo Contact Importer to access your Facebook Account.



5. Once the download has completed, return to the Contacts home page by selecting the contacts Menu.
6. Select the Fix Duplicates entries option.



7. In the Clean Up Duplicates, select Merge All Exact to remove Exact Matches.



8. Examine any left over similar matches and decide whether to merge them or skip them.

Export your Contacts from Yahoo Mail

Assuming you don’t use Yahoo Mail as your primary mail client, you’ll want to export your contacts so you can import them into your primary address book.

1. From the Tools menu, select Tools -> Export.



2. Select Export Yahoo! CSV and Export Now.

Mac Users: The file will be saved into your Downloads folder.  The file should be called something similar to: yahoo_xx.csv (it depends on the first 2 letters of the last name of your first contact – in my case the last name is Abel, so my file is yahoo_ab.csv).
PC Users: You will be prompted to save your file to you local machine.

Import Your Contacts into Your Address Book

Mac Users: Import Your Contacts into Your Apple Address Book

1. In your Address Book select the File Menu -> Import.
2. Select the yahoo_xx.csv file from your Downloads folder to import the contacts.  Press OK to import.
3. Once the import has completed, remove duplicate entries by using the Card Menu -> Look for duplicates.

PC Users: Import Your Contacts Into Outlook

1. In Outlook select File Menu Import and Export.
2. Make sure Import from another program or file is highlighted. Click Next.
3. Now make sure Comma Separated Values (Windows) is selected. Click Next.
4. Use the Browse button the select the file you downloaded from Outlook.
5. Select Do not import duplicate items. Click Next.
6. Select the Outlook folder you want to import the contacts to. This will usually be your Contacts folder. Click Next.
7. Click Map Custom Fields. Make sure all columns from the CSV file are mapped to the desired Outlook address book fields. You can create new mappings by dragging the column title to the desired field. Any previous mapping of the same column will be replaced with the new. Click OK.
8. Click Finish.

Participating on Online Social Networking tools like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin can be an effective way to build your reputation and reach an expanded audience; if you connect with the right communities, share quality content and engage your target audience effectively.

To increase your Social Networking effectiveness, identify which of the following stages you are currently in and if you can move to the next stage.

Stage 1: The Conversationalist

Profile: Uses Social Media for sharing personal photos and updates.  Doesn’t use Social Media for business purposes and only networks with people they know.

Audience: Friends and Family.

Opportunities: Keeping up to date with personal relationships that are most important to you.

Risks: Missing out on opportunities to expand your reach in your niche and generate new customers.

Effectiveness: Unless you have lots of family and friends in your niche, you are probably not going to generate any business.

Moving to the next stage: Shift your focus to building your business network and break past using social networks strictly for personal.  Start with creating a Linkedin profile, or a Twitter account.

Stage 2: The Connector

Profile: Uses Social Media for networking and keeping up-to-date with their existing business network.  Doesn’t share much content, just adds people as they meet them.  May not be open to networking with people outside their existing network.

Audience: Existing business network.

Opportunities: Keeping up to date with what is going on in your business network may lead to increased visibility and opportunities.

Risks: A very time consuming way to network that doesn’t take advantage of social media’s one-to-many approach as you rely on meeting people first.

Effectiveness: It is limited by the opportunities available in your current network.

Moving to the next stage: Brainstorm a list of subjects that are interesting to your target audience and find sources for content, such as blogs, videos and news channels.  Follow industry leaders, share their content and look for ways to network with people outside those you’ve met in person.

Stage 3: The Filter

Profile: Sees the opportunities in sharing content, but doesn’t blog or create original online content themselves.  Finds and shares a lot of content with their network or niche.  They are open to networking with people they don’t know and could be trying to grow or build their mailing list.

Audience: Your target audience of existing and potential customers.

Opportunities: Build a reputation as someone who is a Hub for great content.

Risks: Sharing content that is interesting to you, but not your target audience could cause people to tune out and if you only share content and don’t engage people, you just look like a one way broadcast service.

Effectiveness: Sharing good content, even if it’s not your own, can help effectively build your reputation and associate you with quality.  It’s better to be a good filter than a bad content creator.

Moving to the next stage: By monitoring what content your target audience enjoys, you can begin to create similar content with your own twist or perspective.

Stage 4: The Creator

Profile: Creates and shares content regularly with their niche and actively tries to expand their reach and build their reputation.  Networks with people they don’t know and often has multiple social networking and content channels such as blogs, podcasts, video, pictures.

Audience: Your target audience is existing and potential customers.  Potential strategic alliances with partners who also service your target audience.

Opportunities: Expanding your reach in your niche beyond what you are physically capable of doing yourself becoming a 24-hour marketing machine.  Increases website traffic and visibility to get you in front of more potential customers.

Risks: If your content doesn’t appeal to your audience, lacks quality or is too “salesy,” your reputation is at risk and may cost you potential customers and opportunities.

Effectiveness: Extremely effective if you have a strategy to move people past being a connection on a social network and into your sales cycle.

Moving to the next stage: Look at ways that you can improve your field/industry/area of expertise and create content on it.  Collaborate with other Thought Leaders.

Stage 5: The Thought Leader

Profile: Contributes to shaping their field or industry, usually having a fan or customer base of peers who are seeking guidance and direction in the industry.

Audience: Industry Peers, Conference Organizers, Media

Opportunities: Travel, speaking at events, book deals, interviews and media coverage.

Risks: If your Industry Peers are your target niche, fine.  But if your business comes from elsewhere, it’s also important to stay focused on your current and potentials customers.

Effectiveness: Instead of having to look for opportunities and make things happen, opportunities are now coming to you with ease.

Moving to the next stage: Is there one?  You tell me.