Top 8 Tools to Optimize Your Work Day!

Top 8 Tools to Optimize Your Work Day!

This is list of the Top 8 tools to make you and your employees more productive and organized:  I use all of the tools listed here and my productivity has soared. 

Google Calendar

Even though many professionals live and die by their Outlook Calendar, Google’s Calendar is simpler to use and have a great range of features such as collaboration for scheduling and admin, the ability to keep different calendars for different functions or staff, the ability to embed on your websites or blogs and many more useful features for your business!

QuickBooks

QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.

QuickBooks is the best of the best, with many added features such as payroll, inventory, importing capabilities from your bank and merchant accounts, etc. Stay away from the QBO, QuickBooks Online version that Intuit is pushing. Even though Intuit makes QBO sound great, it lacks many features of the desktop version!  QuickBooks is the best way to go for full featured, simple accounting management. 

If you live in South Florida you can find practical live courses at www.QuickBooksTrainingCourses.com 

WordPress

Wordpress is a website creating software. Wordpress allows making websites fast, simply and easy. This software helps you optimize your business’ website to become user and viewer friendly.

WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content-management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL, which runs on a web hosting service. Features include a plug-in architecture and a template system. WordPress is used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013. WordPress is the most popular blogging system in use on the Web, at more than 60 million websites. It was first released on May 27, 2003, by its founders, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, as a fork of b2/cafelog. As of September 2013, version 3.6 had been downloaded more than 6 million times.

If you live in South Florida you can find practical live courses at www.wordpresstrainingandclasses.com

Evernote

Evernote is an application that allows you to save information in the for of a text file, PDF, picture, voice note or audio note and access it online, from your desktop, laptop, iPad, or iPhones. The notes that you create will sync amongst all of your devices and is easily accessible and searchable. In this application you can create notebooks and tag notes to create your own virtual filing system.

If you want to go paperless, Evernote is perfect for you.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a free project management suite. It keeps project management simple. It is a flexible platform with a selection of plug-in services. And it has a designated discussion area where you can go to ask questions or give your opinion on a project. Basecamp helps to keep all information together and streamline communication.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a social media management system tool that helps you keep track and manage your social network channels. It makes monitoring what people are saying about you and your brand easier. Hootsuite allows you to view streams from multiple networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and post updates directly.

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is an email marketing service that is intuitive and easy for use for all. It follows the simple steps: create a look, select your audience and finally schedule and send your email. With hundreds of free design templates Constant Contact makes email advertising campaigns easy.

You can get a Free 60-Day trial at: http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=imeenrichmentcenter 

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud is a software as a service offering from Adobe Systems that gives users access to a collection of software developed by Adobe for graphic design, video editing, web development, photography, and cloud services. With software accessing Adobe for all your projects is simple and easy. Instead of paying hundreds for Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe products, you can easily subscribe to Creative Cloud from $29.99 to $49.99 per month.

These eights tools will help you be more creative in your business, helping you reduce costs and increasing revenue! Give them a try! You will absolutely love them!  

Manny Sarmiento - CEO / President
New Media, New Marketing, Inc. 
www.NewMediaNewMarketing.com 

Top 10 Wordpress Plugins

Top 10 Wordpress Plugins

WordPress is an open-source CMS which hosts and powers over 7- million websites around the world. From popular news sites to small blogs.

WordPress is popular because of how easy it is to customize to your own requirements with easy to install plugins to make changes to your design or add additional functions to a site. But, with over 30,000 plugins available in WordPress can be a bit overwhelming in deciding which one is the right one for your website.

Below are a few WordPress Plugins that can optimize your website for maximum efficiency.

NextGen Gallery

            This plug in has over 6 million users, and it provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images. It also has the capability of batch uploading, import meta data, add/delete/sort images, edit thumbnails, and more.

Contact Form 7

            This plugin can manage multiple contact forms, and you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with an simple and easy markup. This form supports other plugins such as Ajax, CAPTCHA and Akismet.

iThemes Security
            This plugin uses a site check to scan your website for malwate, blacklist status, website errors and out-of-date software. The plugin secures any passwords that are being saved in your website.

Popup Domination

            This plugin is about increasing the number of people who sign up to your email list. The more people on your email list, the more traffic you can control. Meaning more money you are capable of making.

Google XML Sitemaps

            This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google to better index your website. It is much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.

All in One SEO Pack
            With over one million users, this plugin has been around for several year and is one of the most popular SEO plugin. The plugin offers standard requirements that are needed for an SEO plugin such as canonical URLs and sitemap creation. The plugin is beginner friendly, working out the box.

WP Super cache

            Sometimes, WordPress pages can be slow to load and therefore it is important to use a catching plugin. The plugin generates a static html file from your dynamic WordPress blog. Once a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. This is a simple and effective catching plugin for beginners.

WP Socializer

            This plugin is an advanced plugin for inserting social bookmarkers and sharing buttons. The features include: buttons on posts, and sidebars.

Gplus-author
            This plugin will get your author’s profile linked in Google+

Facebook & Twitter Social Plugins

            Use text widget  in order to install these plugins, or you can download a simple plugin from WordPress’ directory.

7 SEO Tips To Grow a Small Business

7 SEO Tips To Grow a Small Business

Sometimes being a small business means that growing is slow and expensive. This is not necessarily true. One of the easiest and cheapest ways to help your business grow is to use SEO. Search Engine Optimization. 

Get your business’ website on the front page of Google, and your small business will start growing.

Keyword Research

Know what your costumers are searching for by using Google Keyword Planer. The Google Keyword Planner is a free tool offered by Google. This will help find words your competitors are using. With these keyword you enrich your content.

  
Stand Out Using Onsite SEO

Create unique page titles, meta descriptions, URLs and content. By creating additional pages can help you target new keywords and send signals to different search engines.

Blog

Write content that your audience will read and share. Make sure to use images, video tips, news and more. A great way to do this is to answer questions and offer solutions. Offer free information and knowledge from your field of experience.

Diversify You Marketing

Reviews, social media, email, guest blogging, display ads, remarking forums, Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Instagram –can all drive traffic and leads. Use these platforms in your niche and gain an audience of people who will look at your business.

Encourage Action!

Make sure your sites visitors are taking the action you want them to. You want them to call you? Tell them. Tell them why they should call you.

 Efficient SEO With A CMS

A Content Management System (CMS) is a way to publish content and manage SEO. An example of a CMS is WordPress.

 Go Mobile

This might be the most important tip. Almost everyone has a smartphone. Create a responsive web design that fits mobiles, tablets and desktops. Keep your mobile and desktop sites on a single domain. Thankfully, many CMS’s now offer free responsive templates.

Top Social Sites & Top Networking Sites for a Successful Business

Top Social Sites & Top Networking Sites for a Successful Business

Social Networking and Using the Top 5 Tools

The most common question I'm asked when teaching my students about Social Media is "Which Social Media Sites are the Most Important for My Business".  The answer may surprise you. While many people think that Facebook is a must for business, it is a site you could theoretically do most without.

There are three elements to look for when choosing social media sites to be active in.

First, the social networking, social bookmarking, video, or other social media site must have plenty of active users. 

Second, the sites must include the persons in your target market and/or professionals

Third, the sites must be SEO friendly, which means that these social media sites appear on the search engine results pages, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.

These are the Top 5 Social Media Sites that meet these requirements and you must use to have more success in your business. 

5. Facebook  AlthoughIt almost didn't make my Top 5. Facebook is intrusive, not all that professional, but it has over a billion members. The key to using Facebook for business is creating a Business Page, formerly called a Fan Page, with an interactive and engaging iframe. Other than that, Facebook is useless for business since no one is listening and those are are speaking are speaking nonsense. The tool I find extremely useful on Facebook is events.

4. Twitter  This Social Networking / Microblog site is growing and becoming more practical. It still lack engagement for most, but it can be a useful tool for business. Especially when your business has an established #hashtag

3. Pinterest This microblog has recently rising for business marketing. With hundreds of thousands users. Using Pinterest is a great way to find a niche audience that will re-pin your business' post and create a residual marketing strategy.

2. Google+  The fact that Google+ Plus is closely related and interact with the Google Search Engine, and with Google Places, makes it a must-have for businesses. Business owners realize the importance of being on Google+, this Social Media tool is exploding in members.  Be sure to add a +1 button to your website and watch engagement grow.

1. LinkedIn  By far the most important Social Media and Social Networking tool, LinkedIn has enough members to fit out criteria, and these members are, for the most part, the professionals you need to engage with to create more business and increase your sales.

These Top 5 Social Media sites are just a small portion of what a great social media strategy should. Social media network, social media bookmarking, social photo sharing and other social networking sites are opened constantly.

Keep your eyes and ears opened when you are on Google for the next, "big" or "greatest" site. If a site pops up often when you are researching your company, industry or competition, then it is the site you need to create a keyword-rich profile on. And don't forget to add your professional picture or logo to the profile.

Manny Sarmiento - President / CEO
New Media, New Marketing, Inc. http://www.nmx2.com / manny@nmx2.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/mannysarmiento