There are several simple steps you can take to quiet the noise around you, focus on what’s most important, be more productive, and accomplish more each day. If you do it right, you can also still make time for quiet relaxation, enjoying the outdoors, or taking a break to consume your favorite digital content.

Spend 15 minutes each morning to plan your day

When you wake up in the morning, or when you first get to work, stop and spend 15 minutes to plan your day. Alternatively, you could do this at the end of each day (or both). Do whatever works best for you. You might be surprised how much more you can accomplish each day by simply planning. This is especially helpful when you work at a computer and have so many potential distractions vying for your attention.

Planning: Time Blocking or To-Do lists

The important thing is moving forward each day with a purpose and a plan, the specifics in how you create that plan are up to you.

Some people prefer to create a simple to-do list of each thing you will accomplish that day. Put time-sensitive and higher priority items at the top of the list.

You can write your to-do list on paper or use a digital app. Some good apps for that purpose are Google Keep, ColorNote, Todoist, and so many more.

Others prefer time blocking as a way to stay more focused and on task. Time blocking is a way of organizing your day into a series of time slots. Each of these slots is intended as time for working on a specific task or tasks.

A good way to approach time blocking is to bundle similar tasks together into the same time slot. For example, if you find yourself distracted by your email inbox all day and could actually be more productive by limiting the time spent on emails, you could block out a specific amount of time at the beginning, middle, and end of the day for checking and responding to emails and other communications. If you have a bunch of smaller tasks you could schedule those together and have another block of time dedicated for tasks that take longer and need more focus.

Time blocking, when done right, can lead to being much more productive each day. Sure, you might find that your day never goes exactly as planned but with time blocking you are likely to be much more productive.

Tune out the noise (or just contain it)

If endless chatter and social media are getting in the way of your productivity, but you don’t want to ditch it altogether, simply schedule blocks of time specifically for that purpose. Or you could schedule blocks of time intended for miscellaneous and random activities. It isn’t necessary to be overly militant with this. Find what best fits your lifestyle. Try it out and discover what results in the most productive and positive results for you.

Live each day with purpose

Have you ever thought about what you really want to do with your life? What are some of your long term goals? What legacy do you want to leave behind? If you live each day with a purpose you will be much more likely to actually accomplish the things most important to you. Don’t let your dreams be dreams. Just do it! Do you want to write a book but never made time to do it? You might be surprised at how much “extra” time you actually have as a result of dedication to time blocking.

Be proactive and not reactive

By approaching each day with a plan and a purpose, you are living a proactive life rather than reactive. It’s easy to get caught in the reactive trap, drowning in that sea of endless digital content, and if you don’t have a plan you’re more likely to find yourself wasting hours upon hours with nothing to show for it. Be proactive. In little as 15 minutes a day you can easily alter the course of your life.

The post 15 Minutes To A Better And More Productive Day appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Note: Once you have enough reviews on Google, your rating will show up when your site appears in Google search results – establishing even more credibility for your business.

Review Sites

Some of the most popular and most visible sources for business reviews today are:

• Google (for businesses with a physical location listed on Google Maps)
• Facebook
• Amazon (for products)
• Yelp (especially for restaurants)
• Trip Advisor (travel related)

How to Get Reviews for Your Business

Organic/Natural Reviews

If you provide a quality service and good experience to your customers (or even a negative experience) some of them are naturally going to want to leave a review for you. Natural reviews are the ideal type of review for you and your business. This is an indication that you’re doing something right (or wrong) and it’s prompting people to comment on their experience with you.

Asking for Reviews

It’s okay to ask your customers for reviews. Many people don’t go out of their way to leave business reviews but you might be surprised at how many of them will leave a review for you if you ask them to. I’ve personally had a lot of success with this by sending requests to my customers via email. If you feel like your customer had a good experience with you, it would be a good idea to ask them to write a review and post it online. Make it easy on them and provide them a link to one or two of your preferred sites for receiving reviews. The easier it is, the more likely they will do it.

Review Services/Apps

There are services available that help to automate the process of receiving positive reviews by sending your customers an initial request asking them about their experience. If the experience was negative the customer will see a form they can fill out that sends the feedback to you to let you know how you can improve. If the experience was positive they will be prompted to leave a review on Google, Facebook or other. This type of customer engagement can be very useful for discovering what you are doing well and ways you can improve.

What NOT To Do

Do not solicit reviews and do not incentivize.

A few years back, Google cracked down on fake reviews. Soliciting reviews is a “suspect behaviour” according to Google, also it’s not good for potential customers to be presented with a positive view of your business only to potentially discover that maybe your quality of service doesn’t match what they read about you. It’s also potentially illegal in your state to incentivize or solicit reviews (i.e. paying or rewarding people to leave positive reviews). There are plenty of ways to get reviews for your business without resorting to these black hat tactics.

Now What?

ACTION ITEMS:

1. I would encourage you to make a list of the customers you have worked with in the past few years that had a positive experience with you and reach out to ask them to write a review for you. Be sure to include a link to one or two sites where they can post the review.
2. Consider what you can add to your daily processes to prompt more customers to leave reviews for you in the future. This could be something as simple as asking for a review in a thank you note with the customer’s receipt or a follow up thank you email. If you don’t normally have access to your customers email addresses this can be a good opportunity to start asking for it and build up an email marketing list. Not only could this help you get more business reviews but it can also be an easy way to get repeat business from your customers.

The post 3 Simple Ways to Get More Positive Reviews for Your Business appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

• Lead Generation Campaigns
• SEO Campaigns
• Landing Pages With A Call To Action
• Email Marketing
• Social Media Marketing

Lead Generation Campaigns

Digital marketing and advertising, such as via Facebook ads or Google Adwords, can contribute to an effective online lead generation campaign. Lead generation campaigns are a more focused and targeted approach for building an email marketing list, generating leads, or to sale products. This type of campaign involves sending people to a landing page designed specifically for achieving the goals of your campaign. For example, a law firm might use this to get qualified leads, a chiropractor might use this approach to get new patients, a business consultant could use it as a way to build their email marketing list. When creating a lead generation campaign it’s important to start with the end goal in mind. Consider what actions you want people to take and create the campaign to effectively funnel people through to that end goal.

SEO Campaigns

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is essential if you want people to easily find your website via the search engines (such as Google). If you want to be found on the first page of those results, you’re likely going have to put in a lot of effort to get there, depending on how competitive your industry is. An SEO campaign often involves making sure your website content is optimized for the keywords and phrases you want to target (i.e. what are people searching for to find your site), writing unique content (content is king), creating citations (those are online business listings such as a listing on Google Maps or Yellow Pages), and sometimes link-building (other websites linking back to you). The best effective strategy varies for each business.

Landing Page With A Call To Action

When a visitor arrives at your website there should be a clear message and specific calls to action based on what you want the visitor to do as a result of visiting your website or landing page. For example, if you are a dentist and your goal is to receive phone calls from people interested in your services, make sure your phone number is clearly visible at the top of the page. You would also want to have a “request appointment” or “contact us” button visible at the top of the page. Putting a contact form on the page can also be beneficial – it removes the steps required to contact you. You want to remove barriers and make it as easy as possible for people to take the desired action.

For businesses with a physical location make the address easy to find, if you want customers to come to you.

Always be thinking of what actions you want people to take and make it a priority in how your website is designed and laid out. It can also be beneficial to create landing pages for specific campaigns, such as for a special you are offering to new clients or a new product launch.

Email Marketing

You’re missing out on a lot of potential customers and sales if you’re not building an email list. Often times people might be interested in your service or product but are not ready yet to purchase. People are typically more willing to join your mailing list if you provide useful information. This is also a way to educate and bring awareness to other products and service you offer that they might not know about. Be careful not to overwhelm. You may want to limit sending emails to your list to just once a month. For some businesses, weekly emails might make sense.

Social Media Marketing

A lot of people are using social media, whether it’s Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc. For some businesses it can be beneficial to use social media marketing, especially if your target market includes the people who are already spending a lot of time on those platforms. Facebook makes it easy to target a specific audience with their Ad Manager (and it doesn’t cost much to give it a try). This targeting increases the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. Social media marketing is not a good fit for all businesses but some businesses actually have great success doing it.

The post 5 Ways For Entrepreneurs To Get More Sales, More Leads & More Customers appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

How it works

First, I’ll explain how this will work so you know what you’re getting into. We’re going to use the Cookie Monster plugin to allow us to capture a cookie based on the URL the visitor uses to enter your website (i.e. http://www.yourstore.com?ref=JohnDoe). The cookie will now be remembered (in this case “JohnDoe”) and stored in the users browser. At checkout the cookie is passed on via a hidden field “how_find_us” which is normally used to determine how the customer found your site (but we’ll be modifying that).

The way this will work for your affiliates is they’ll need to choose an affiliate code, anything really, such as “Bob” or “CompanyInc”, and put that affiliate code ( ?ref=Bob ) at the end of any of your store URL’s (i.e. http://www.yourstore.com?ref=Bob, http://www.yourstore.com/books/?ref=Bob, http://www.yourstore.com/books/harry-potter/?ref=Bob ).

To track any sales that came as a result of referrals go to your WP e-Commerce “Store Sales” page and check either the sale detail page or CSV export of your sales. The CSV export is the easiest way to see all referral sales at once. The referral code will be listed as “How User Found Us: JohnDoe”.

This method is especially simple and beneficial to small/medium online stores who don’t need all the features of a full-featured affiliate system, especially considering the complexity of integrating such an affiliate system with WP e-Commerce.

How to Implement

Simply follow these steps:

1. From your WordPress Dashboard go to “Settings” –> “Store” and then the “Marketing” tab. Check the box to turn on the “Display How Customer Found Us Survey” (hopefully you weren’t planning on using that feature, because this is a slight modification that’s going to change what it does). Now click update.
2. Download, install and activate the WordPress “Cookie Monster” plugin.
3. From your WordPress Dashboard go to “Settings” –> “Cookie Monster”. In the box next to “URL Parameter 1 :” enter “ref” (ref without quotations). Click “Update options”.
4. Open “wpsc-shopping_cart_page.php” in your theme files… (You may want to make a backup copy of this file before changing it, and also another backup copy after changing it, in case it ever gets over-written, or you want to remove the changes)

Find this code:

<?php if (wpsc_show_find_us()) : ?>
      <tr>
         <td><label for='how_find_us'><?php _e('How did you find us' , 'wpsc'); ?></label></td>
         <td>
            <select name='how_find_us'>
               <option value='Word of Mouth'><?php _e('Word of mouth' , 'wpsc'); ?></option>
               <option value='Advertisement'><?php _e('Advertising' , 'wpsc'); ?></option>
               <option value='Internet'><?php _e('Internet' , 'wpsc'); ?></option>
               <option value='Customer'><?php _e('Existing Customer' , 'wpsc'); ?></option>
            </select>
         </td>
      </tr>
<?php endif; ?>

Replace with this code:

<?php if (wpsc_show_find_us()) : ?>
      <tr>
          <td colspan='2' style="height: 5px;">
              <input class="text" value="<?php echo $_COOKIE[get_option('cookie_param1')]; ?>" name="how_find_us" type="hidden">
          </td>
      </tr>
<?php endif; ?>

It’s possible that your code is going to be a little bit different than mine, the important thing is to replace the “how_find_us” drop-down form code with a hidden input field that grabs the referral cookie code…

<input class="text" value="<?php echo $_COOKIE[get_option('cookie_param1')]; ?>" name="how_find_us" type="hidden">

That’s it! You’re done.

You may want to make a test purchase to verify that it’s working. (Be sure to visit your store with a ref code in the URL, i.e. http://www.yourstore.com?ref=Bob )

The post How to Track Affiliate / Referral Sales in WP e-Commerce Shopping Cart Plugin for WordPress appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Put this into your sidebar template or elsewhere:

<?php $comments = get_comments('status=approve&number=5'); ?>
<h3 class="widget-title">Recent Comments</h3>
<ul class="recomm">
<?php foreach ($comments as $comment) { ?>
    <li class="recomm-wrapper"><?php
        $title = get_the_title($comment->comment_post_ID);
        echo get_avatar( $comment, '53' );
        echo '<span class="recommauth">' . ($comment->comment_author) . '</span>';
        ?> said: "<?php
        echo wp_html_excerpt( $comment->comment_content, 72 ); ?>.."
        on <a href="<?php echo get_permalink($comment->comment_post_ID); ?>"
           rel="external nofollow" title="<?php echo $title; ?>">
           <?php echo $title; ?> </a>
    </li>
<?php }  ?> </ul>

Here’s the CSS styling I’m using (you may need to modify it according to your theme):

ul.recomm {
	margin-left: 0;
	margin-bottom: 36px;
	list-style: none;
}
.recomm-wrapper {
   clear:both;
   min-height: 53px;
   margin-bottom: 14px;
}
.recomm .avatar {
   float:left;
   margin-top:5px;
   margin-right:10px;
   border: #d8d8d8 1px solid;
}
.recommauth {
	font-weight: bold;
}

The post WordPress Recent Comments with Excerpt and Gravatar appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Here’s how you do this…

Add the following javascript code to the header of your website (somewhere in between the <head> </head> tags)…

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
<!-- POPUP WINDOW SCRIPT -->
var win=null;
function NewWindow(mypage,myname,w,h,scroll,pos){
if(pos=="random"){LeftPosition=(screen.availWidth)?Math.floor(Math.random()*(screen.availWidth-w)):50;TopPosition=(screen.availHeight)?Math.floor(Math.random()*((screen.availHeight-h)-75)):50;}
if(pos=="center"){LeftPosition=(screen.availWidth)?(screen.availWidth-w)/2:50;TopPosition=(screen.availHeight)?(screen.availHeight-h)/2:50;}
if(pos=="default"){LeftPosition=50;TopPosition=50}
else if((pos!="center" && pos!="random" && pos!="default") || pos==null){LeftPosition=0;TopPosition=20}
settings='width='+w+',height='+h+',top='+TopPosition+',left='+LeftPosition+',scrollbars='+scroll+',location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,toolbar=no,resizable=no';
win=window.open(mypage,myname,settings);
if(win.focus){win.focus();}}
function CloseNewWin(){if(win!=null && win.open)win.close()}
window.onfocus=CloseNewWin;
<!-- POPUP WINDOW SCRIPT -->
</script>

Now place the following code on your website, like a normal hyperlink but with some extra code. Edit this line according to the link you are wanting to open…

<a href="http://www.yoursite.com/awebpage.php" onClick="NewWindow(this.href,'TitleGoesHere','550','400','yes','center');return false" onFocus="this.blur()">OpenThisPage</a>

That’s it.

The post How to Create a Simple Javascript popup window appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

After spending a lot of time trying to get this process (install Windows XP from USB Flash drive) working I found an easier, quicker, solution (compared to most online tutorials). It’s called WinToFlash.

This tutorial shows you how to install Windows XP from a USB Flash drive. (Seriously, easy!) It would probably also work for Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows 7, etc.

Optionally you can follow these nLite tutorials to remove unwanted Windows files before installing Windows:

• http://www.i64x.com/eeexp.php
• http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:nlitexp

I just finished doing this on my Asus 1001p netbook, after removing Windows 7 Starter (which consumed over 500MB of the 1Gig of memory at bootup, no programs running!)

I decided to opt for installing Windows XP via a USB Flash drive. I didn’t have an external DVD drive available. After following various complicated tutorials (which never did fully work for me) I found a very simple way to take the resulting Windows install files created by nLite (or copied from your Windows install disc) and create a bootable USB Flash drive: WinToFlash ( http://wintoflash.com ).

With WinToFlash all you need to have is a Folder on your PC containing all the Windows install files. Then you just open WinToFlash, tell it where your Windows install files directory is, then tell it what letter your Flash drive is (i.e. J: ). It does the rest for you. SIMPLE Once it’s done boot from the flash drive on your netbook (or PC you want to install this copy of Windows on).

When I first tried this I was getting BSOD (blue screen of death) errors when Windows setup was starting. (The problem was not with WinToFlash) After doing some research online I decided it might be due to some corrupt files (the XP disc I copied files from was too scratched up)… so I located another disc and went through the nLite process again (was easy because it saved my previous settings)… then did the WinToFlash process again. This time Windows XP installed without a problem from my USB Flash drive! (much easier than the tutorials that wanted me to accomplish this with 3+ programs and never worked)

The best thing about this is:

• My Windows install was only 270MB (with all Asus 1001p driver integrated and non-essential windows XP stuff removed, thanks to the nLite tutorial)
• Bootup to XP is fast (less than 30 seconds)
• Memory usage is at less than 200 MB even after installing a bunch of programs (disabled non-essential startup processes).
• No CD/DVD drive necessary for installation.

The post Install Windows XP from USB Flash Drive appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

No worries. Follow these simple steps to publish a new Blog post:

Below the following steps are some screenshots to help guide you along the steps to submitting an article… If you are already familiar with WordPress you probably won’t need this guide…

1. Click on ‘Posts’ (from the left side menu)
2. Click ‘Add New’ (also left side menu). You should now see a page titled “Add New Post”
3. The first box is for the Title of your article.
4. The second box is for the article content. You can either paste your article into this box, or type your article (if it’s not already written). If you are pasting from Microsoft Word choose the “Paste from Word” option . You’ll find that by clicking the ‘Show/Hide Kitchen Sink’ button . There are also options for styling your content.
5. To add an image click the ‘add an image’ icon next to “Upload/Insert”. (If this is your first article submission you won’t yet have the ability to add an image.) You can add an image from your computer or from another URL (another website). It is recommended that you choose the ‘From Computer’ option. If your image comes from somewhere else online, find the image and save it to your computer first. If you are adding an image from your computer click ‘Select Files’ on the ‘From Computer’ tab. A box should come up that allows you to browse your computer to find the image you want to upload. Once you have find the right image, select it and click ‘open’. The image should now be uploaded and you’ll be presented with some options regarding how you want the image displayed within your article (size, aligned to the left, right or center, etc). Click ‘Insert into Post’. You should now see the image within your article. If you want to adjust something click on the image and you’ll see one icon that allows you to adjust the options and another icon to delete the image. After editing image options click ‘update’ to apply the changes.
6. Once you are done with the article content, and any images, add an excerpt into the box labeled ‘Excerpt’. The excerpt is typically one sentence, or paragraph, long and it is the article excerpt or ‘teaser’ that will be displayed on your Blog page along with the article title. (If your blog is designed to show excerpts on the Blog page, rather than the entire article ).
7. You typically won’t need to do anything with the other boxes: trackbacks, custom fields, Discussion, etc.
8. Add “tags” to your article in the ‘Post Tags’ area. Tags are keywords or topics related to your article. If your article is about ‘freedom’ and ‘economics’ using those as tags will help people find your article among other articles of similar topics.
9. Categories: Choose an existing category or add a new category. Simple. The difference between a category and a tag is typically that your category is the main topic of the article, whereas tags are sub-topics and other keywords related to the article subject.
10. Now you’re ready to publish your article. Click ‘Publish’.

The post WordPress: How To Write a Blog Post appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Branding for startups, small businesses and Entrepreneurs…

Some “branding experts” are saying that you should spend thousands of dollars on branding. Don’t just believe them without considering a few things first. A good branding consultant will take the time to understand what stage you are at in the development of your business and offer services that make sense for what you need.

There are valid reasons for some companies to spend tens of thousands of dollars (even much more) on branding, however, these are typically large corporations and other well-established companies – the ones that can afford to spend this kind of money on a brand identity.

Why would you spend thousands of dollars on branding when you may not even know who your target-market is? Do you know who your target market is? Or maybe you haven’t even made any profit yet? If that’s you – you still don’t know if what you’re getting into is going to work. Do you even know yet if your idea will take root? Take things one step at a time.

What should you do now?

Branding encompasses many things. It’s usually a good idea to spend some money on a logo, a nicely designed website and maybe even some promotional materials – and that could very well involve a branding agency – but don’t overdo it.

Everyone needs a website, it’s an essential marketing tool for your business – just be sure to recognize what you need and what you’re getting for your money. Don’t spend $10,000 on a website when what you need should only cost you $3,000 or $5,000. How will you know what it should cost? Ask around, talk to some web design experts and get some quotes.

One of the first things you should do, before branding design, is BRAND IDENTITY… this is the process of figuring out what your target market is, what you are best at, and where you want to put your focus. Your target market should not be everyone. You should specifically define your target market and focus your business on that. That doesn’t mean all of your clients/customers are going to fit into your definition, but it means you’re more likely to enjoy what you’re doing.

The post What’s all this talk about Branding? appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.

Google loves WordPress. I love Google and I love WordPress (it’s very search engine friendly). It makes Search Engine Optimization easy!

If you can operate Microsoft Word, you can probably use WordPress.

It lowers the bar for what it takes to maintain websites. Although WordPress began as a blogging platform, it’s now so much more.

No software needed. Have a laptop and wireless connection? Go to the nearest wi-fi hotspot if you want and blog about your cats or your business. (You can even easily blog from your iPhone or Android phone with WordPress’ mobile app!

WordPress Kills Spam. That’s right, you won’t have to worry about a flood of spam comments (Just enable the built-in Akismet plugin).

Not just a blog. WordPress has a feature called “pages” which allows you to easily create pages on your website. For example, you could add an “about me” page with your biography. You can even create an entire web site using pages in WordPress, with a custom home page and your blog as one of the sub-pages.

Widgets for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more. You can add “widgets” to your sidebar and rearrange them without touching any HTML code or messing up your blog. Just drag and drop the sidebar widgets around, and instantly you can have fun stuff in your sidebar.

Customizable. You can make WordPress do just about anything by simply finding the right plugin.

If you ever get tired of how your website looks, simply create, or find, a different WordPress Theme.

Right about now you might be asking yourself “What do I need a Web Designer for if WordPress is so easy and will do all of this for me?” Your Web Designer will be there to setup WordPress and give it a look customized to your brand. Your Web Designer can also setup and customize features and plugins for you to ensure that your site is all ready to go, ready for you to take over, and ready for business!

Choosing a WordPress-based website leaves you in control. It’s also a future-proof solution considering that WordPress is steadily growing as the most popular website platform.

The post Why I love WordPress appeared first on Utah WordPress Web Design.