If they can become stars on YouTube and make money by just sticking a camera in their face and vlogging weekly for months on end…why can’t you? What’s even cooler is becoming a Twolia star!

Here are a few YouTube pros to watch for ideas:

>>> iJustine vlogs about her vvvvllllooooooogggg:

>>> CharlieJames1975 loves to workout on camera and post it on YouTube. She even has a ‘von montz’ challenge ‘vor you’ as well as some Abs-spiration:

>>> The Shaytards: Reality TV… YouTube Style

Photo Via Weblogtoolscollection

So now that your Wordpress website is all set up, you’re probably ready to start adding content. But now you’re faced with a choice… should you create a traditional homepage or make it so the blog is the first thing people see?

1. Traditional Homepage: This is a great option if there’s something you absolutely want your visitors to see whenever they arrive at your website. If you’re too busy or lazy about making constant website changes, stick with this homepage option.

2. The Blog: If you love to blog or constantly update your website, a home page blog is the thing for you! Impress potential clients and keep them coming back with your wit or beautiful creations.

After your Wordpress theme is installed, it’s time to start customizing your new online space. Wordpress developers have invented a thing called a “plugin” which is kind of like an application. You can get a plugin for just about anything these days. If you’re a musician, here are a few plugins you might want to add to your Wordpress site:

1. JR_Embed: This embed plugin allows you to easily and quickly embed images, music and youtube videos into your blog!

2. BuddyPress: Create your own fan community within Wordpress. This plugin will allow users to register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more.

3. Donations Widget: You deserve to get paid for your work, so this widget helps you accept donations from your fans via AlertPay, Moneybookers or PayPal.

Besides great sound, the other important element to a great video or vlog is LIGHTING. Without great lighting, nobody can see your pretty face and unless you’re as famous as Selena Gomez & Demi Lovato, they won’t stick around to watch.

An example of bad lighting & what NOT TO DO:

Someone turn on the lamp, please!

An example of GREAT video lighting:

Even when iJustine is out and about, she makes lighting her priority.

• You don’t have to spend a lot of money on fancy lighting, particularly if you’re just starting out in video. Check Ikea for deals, they have some pretty nice lamps in the $12-20 range.

Ok, that’s it! With more and more businesses jumping on the Twitter bandwagon because they think they should or someone told them to do it, I need to jump in (once again) with my two cents.

In business…

Twitter should be used to:

1. Let your customers know what’s up in your life/business.
2. Be an online resource & wealth of information.
3. Engage.

Twitter should NOT be used to:

1. Direct market your products and/or services.
2. Come up with new spamming techniques.
3. Have a one-way conversation with yourself (see the other #3).

Get it? Got it? Good. It’s not difficult, really. If you do get it, you can follow me on Twitter.

Translation- Newbies: Learn to speak geek and how to identify something not suitable for work.

This enlightening YouTube video will leave any NOOB (newbie) ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) or at the very least LOL (laughing out loud) as they learn the 1337 SPEAK (elite speak). w00t (so good)!

One of the most important geek speak phrases you’ll learn to identify is when something is NSFW.

For real, this video is FTW and so worth watching.

I don’t want you to say this post is TLDR, so I’ll leave you to watch & decode:

Here’s the LINK…the idiots disabled embedding FTL. Or, just click on the picture below…

We’re inundated with people bringing their businesses to social media.

If you want to market your services or products on social media sites, remember this: FIRST, SELL YOURSELF.

People who hang out on social media sites want to actually know you and don’t appreciate hard sales pitches. If they wanted direct marketing, they’d be somewhere else.

People will do business with you because they know you and like you, just as in ‘real life’ networking situations.

Remember to take the time to genuinely know people online if you want to succeed. Otherwise, your marketing efforts could be in vain.

People and businesses are joining Twitter by the millions. Unfortunately, this means the Twitter ticks are also multiplying. Watch out for these people:

1. The traffic seeker. He’s the guy that chats with you and concludes with a random link to his site that has nothing to do with the conversation.

2. Porn girl. She might look hot and sexy, but we don’t want to know who or what is behind the personality!

3. The non-follower. The people who want to be followed but don’t want to follow back. Unless it’s a personality you admire or you completely enjoy their tweets, why bother.

4. The RT machine. While it’s okay to retweet, it’s uncool to do nothing but RT all the time. You’ll never have a real conversation with these ‘bots, so why bother.

5. TMI. People who tweet about bodily functions, cat puke under the dining room table, and every morsel of food that pops into their mouth. We really don’t need their entire life in that much detail. If, every once in a blue moon, they’re enjoying the largest and most amazing king crab leg ever, that’s another story. We might even appreciate a TwitPic.

6. Direct Message Marketers. You follow them and they reciprocate your generosity by direct messaging you with links to MLM schemes or nasty videos.

7. Know-it-alls with ‘great tools’ to use. Unfortunately, these people (robots?) typically only have one tool and one link in their toolbox. Check their history and there’s no further interaction.

8. The human RSS feed. While it’s cool to link to your blog or other sites (we love great material!), it’s uncool to use your Twitter account exclusively as an RSS feed (unless you’re a news station).

9. Product pushers. These business folk jumped on the social media bandwagon because they heard it was the ‘in’ thing for business. They haven’t figured out Twitter manners because their constant product pushing tweets don’t exactly inspire me to reciprocate the follow.

Gone are the days of fancy websites with spectacular flashy intros. Company owners have happily embraced WordPress to build websites for their businesses. Why is WordPress becoming a trend in the business world? Here are a few hints:

Flexibility.

For those starting a business, it’s inevitable that marketing as well as sales pitches are going to evolve overtime, particularly in the first year. Even if you can’t handle setting up a WordPress site, just about anyone can handle the updates on their own. Creating a small business website with Wordpress will save hundreds, if not thousands in website management fees.

Dynamic Content.

Because dynamic content and SEO friendly websites are here to stay, many businesses are incorporating professional blogs into their websites. WordPress meets all of these requirements. Plus, adding a blog to your website can be incorporated at the click of a mouse. After all, WordPress was originally created for blogging.

Check out:

Using WordPress to Build Websites Instead of Blogs and Using WordPress to Grow Your Business.

Win a free book!

I’m giving away 10 free copies of the book Suburban Diva: From the Real Side of the Picket Fence. I’ll select at least one winner (maybe more ) from the people who comment on this post! So leave a comment or your favorite recipe and you could win!

This past Friday, I picked 3 winners and today I’ll pick 1-2!

If your company isn’t already on Twitter, it’s time to consider. With millions of people online and chatting, your business can’t afford to NOT be on Twitter. Here are a few tips for businesses thinking about taking the plunge:

1. Choosing a strong name
Just as your dot com domain is everything, choosing the right Twitter name counts. It’s like judging a book by its cover. Some will decide to follow you or not follow you based entirely on your name and without checking to see what you have to offer.

Tip: First try your business name or industry (@BusinessName) and if that is taken, DO NOT settle for less (i.e. @BusinessName123).  Make it strong, make it count, be CREATIVE (avoid those numbers!).

2. The best background
If you haven’t already, it’s time to Pimp Your Twitter Account. If you’re bringing your business on Twitter, your background should match your website and marketing materials. This sounds like a no-brainer, but I’ve seen so many businesses stick with the uninspiring default background settings provided by Twitter. Jazz it up!

With this in mind, don’t forget about the different screen sizes. Either make a background that can adapt to all sizes or create something to fit the average screen size.

Tip: Twitbacks is a site offering free background designs. This site works really well to temporarily replace the stock options given when you open your Twitter account. However, I’d highly recommend asking your graphic designer to create something unique for your Twitter background if you really want brand recognition.

3. The perfect profile picture
An absolute must on Twitter! Otherwise the default setting is a brown square with “O_o” which is boring, uninspiring, and says nothing about your business. Keep this and chances are, people won’t follow you back.

The verdict is out as to whether or not the picture should be your company logo or a picture of you (or a combination). It seems as though major corporations use logos whereas smaller companies appear to go either way.  The decision is up to you based on your motives for tweeting. But remember what I said about people judging Twitter users by their name? The same goes for profile pictures.

Tip: When you choose your profile picture, don’t change it very often because this will become your Twitter brand.

4. Become search savvy
The site search.twitter.com should be your best friend, especially in the beginning. Here are a few things you can do with the site:

-Learn what people are saying about you, your business, or a particular topic.
-Search for keywords and know what’s happening real time.
-Learn what’s popular now in Twitter Trends

5. Follow and be followed
Unless you’re a well-known personality (@aplusk, @mrskutcher, @kevinrose, @iamdiddy, @oprah, etc.) or people have somehow discovered that you consistently have something over-the-top to say, chances are you’ll need to follow people if you want them to follow you. After all, who wants to follow someone who isn’t interested in others? Why bother…

6. Engage with personality
If your company wants to be a robot that speaks and doesn’t engage, Twitter isn’t the platform for your marketing needs. Companies on Twitter need to engage audiences with vibrant personality:

Talk
Respond
Educate
Listen
Learn
Ask

Tip: What’s your Twitter personality? Check out The 14 Types of Twitter Personalities as well as the five types of Twitter personalities you may not know exist.

7. Be genuine
It’s a small world and you’ll quickly realize that it’s no different on Twitter. People pretend to be company executives and celebrities everyday (remember the Dalai Lama imposter a few months back?).  Some pranks have gone further than others, but most are quickly discovered (and quite obvious).

Be who you are in reality and be who you say you are on Twitter. People will follow and engage.

Shawna Coronado has a good article on how being yourself can help you find Twitter followers.

8. Research your way to success
So many companies (particularly solopreneurs) are jumping into the Twitter trend without any knowledge or planning. Whether or not you want to ‘jump in’ depends upon what your business hopes to gain from Twitter.

Although you might not consider your products and services junk, it will quickly fall into that category if you don’t know how to market properly. So, if you are serious about learning how to market effectively and NOT becoming a blacklisted pariah on Twitter, I’d seriously consider any or all of the following:

•    Careful research
•    Personally using Twitter before diving in with your business name on the line
•    Hiring a consultant
•    Handing over the entire project to someone who know what they’re doing

Tip: Here are a few places to begin your Twitter research-

Get Smart Twitter Tips

How to Use Twitter- Tips for Bloggers

9. Measuring success on Twitter
It is important to remember that social media (Twitter included) can’t always be measured by the bottom line or traditional ROI (return on investment). Instead, business owners must look at things such as traffic, customer engagement, brand awareness/metrics, public relations, retention, interaction, leads, conversation, knowledge, search marketing, etc. Some large brands use and monitor Twitter to see what people are saying and to prevent possible PR disasters.

Good reads: 10 Ways to Measure Social Media Success and Why your social media plan should have success metrics

10. Finding time to tweet
Many live in fear of Twitter. Why? They’re afraid that it might be a time sucking social media monster (run for your lives!).  Here’s the truth: If you don’t have a social media marketing plan or have attention deficit-like tendencies, this could become an issue for you.

There are many factors which will determine how much time your business spends on Twitter. These could include: size, objectives, marketing plan, PR techniques used, type of business, etc.

When you first start using Twitter, it probably will be a time sucking social media monster due to the learning curve (no different than anything else new). But, in time, your Twitter investment can be significantly reduced to just a few minutes per day (again, depends upon the business, goals, etc.).

Tip: Want to know how long your competitor or industry leaders spend on Twitter? Check out TweetStats (remember to research!).

…follow me on Twitter! @egoddess