I set objectives, milestones, prices, and scope of work clearly before starting

Never jump straight into a project the moment it comes about. It really helps if you take some time out to set down objectives, the necessary milestones (it’s your job to come up with these, not the clients’), the exact scope of work, your expectations from clients, and also ask what clients expect from you — all of this, before starting the project (and not while working on one).

Well, that’s nice to hear. But what do I mean by setting down expectations? Assuming a ghost blogging project, which involves writing 600- 1200 words, here’s what I would do:

To the client:

• You own 100% copyrights to my work. I will not showcase this work as a part of my portfolio or even pretend that these blog posts are mine.
• Blog posts will be in the range of 600 – 1200 words. The range is wide so that it can have the space to give a wide berth to ideas.
• Research, originality, linking out to other blogs or sources, using royalty-free stock photos, adding tags, picking categories, and optimizing for SEO are all included in the price quote and are to be expected as deliverables.
• As for the topics, angles to take, opinions, etc. Here are some choices:
  • You may suggest topics, put forth your ideas, and give me explicit instructions to follow.
  • You may have me think of angles, put up the topics for your approval, and I write based on our mutual understanding.
  • In spite of all the hard work that goes into trying to find your voice, match your personality, and to impersonate your character, these are still blog posts with MY ideas. There could be a possibility that you might not want to use the post. In such cases, I’ll take my article back and I’ll retain my rights over those articles or blog posts.
  • If posts have issues with spellings, grammar, language, syntax, etc., I’ll make changes until you are satisfied.

I give wiggle room

We are all different people. We think different. Each of us has different ways of thinking. While we mostly have the same goals such as financial freedom, money, good health, fame or recognition – the way we approach each our needs is vastly different. Our behavior with others, ego states, personality types – all different.

Why am I talking about this? Clients are people, after all

Hence, I give them room to wiggle. I start with trial projects and see how things go. You’ll be surprised at how different it feels to work for every single client (which reinforces my thought that people are different after all). But I determine how much room I give out for clients to wiggle. Sometimes, unfortunately, things don’t work. Scope of work expands inconsiderately at the same price points, ideas don’t match, etc.

I give up, more often than not

I do give up on projects. Actually, I give up much sooner than most of my freelance writer or blogger friends I know. Maybe this is something I should work on or perhaps I do the right thing, I am not so sure. A few instances of mismatch, and the projects are off.

But I am fair. In fact, I am also generous. I cancel projects but:

• I don’t invoice my clients for the work already done (even if I am right or if I am actually justified in invoicing).
• I still edit my articles or blog posts, make final changes, or add what the client asked for in the last email. Like maybe, number of words falling short of average? Or maybe the Meta information for blog posts needed changes? I know I won’t be paid for this, but I do it anyway.
• I clearly state why I am cancelling the project. The client has a right to know why I took this step.
• More often than not, I let my clients keep the articles, blog posts, reports, or whitepapers already completed, with full rights.

You might call me ridiculous, but this is who I am. This is how I do business.

I must admit that I’ve been slacking, off late. I wasn’t able to do as much as I should and that kills me. I wish I could have been a super human with unlimited energy and capability to do more and I wish I could be living on another planet that’s got, say, 48 hours in a day.

Since that’s wishful thinking, I gunned for plan B – get better at what I do and how I do it.

Enter Trello.com: a project management tool that’s free to use and something that you profit from in many different ways.

Trello.com – How Simplicity makes you money

I’ll admit that I am a tool junky. I run after almost every web-based tool available online. The magic happened after I signed up. Trello.com, by far, has the simplest project management interface ever. Simplicity is at the very core of the tool. Simple drag and drop and you are good to go. It won’t take you long to get used to the system and the way trello.com interface works. What’s more, it has responsive design – meaning that it’s interface adapts to the device you use. Of course, it automatically updates your inputs across all connected devices.

How Trello seduces me into productivity

It’s been 5 days since I signed up for Trello and I noticed that ever since I put out my to-do lists and boards (one board for each project I have to work on).  My productivity has shot up to unprecedented levels. Why so?

There’s something about the “damned to-do list that stares you forever while you stare at the computer” sort of interface that trello boasts of.

When you create a board, this is how it looks.

Creating a Board on Trello

Trello Sample Board

Your things to do get into “To Do”, Work in progress gets into “Doing, and anything you finish gets into “Done”. You can do a lot more than just this like inviting members over, adding checklists, set-up due dates, move lists and boards according to priority.

Now, when I create my “to do” list, it doesn’t seem to be like the lone to-do list whose individual items are at the mercy of my work ethic. Just because the “doing” and “done” lists stand right next to each other, you’ll be compelled to finish your list items one after the other. If you don’t, the guilt kills you.

I can’t explain why that happens. I don’t know how putting up two more blank lists that relate to your main “to do” list makes you actually work.

So far, that’s what’s been happening. I have to thank Trello for finally forcing me to write on my blog again.

Have you used Trello? What do you think?

The Colors

Most people are visual. If your website colors are predominantly in black and white while your landing page is red all over, there’s an immediate, sub-conscious disconnect. Red, along with black-and-white is too contrasting and it would simply drive your visitors away, who are only too happy to oblige. Make sure that your landing pages are consistent with your website with regards to color and other graphic elements.

Asking for too much from your visitors

Users on the web are snappy, judgmental, irritable, and impatient. Further, if you need them to do something, you’ve to ask them explicitly. One of the mistakes most businesses do is to have a lot of “call-to-action” buttons on their landing pages.

For instance, “Sign-up” now shows up somewhere. As you scroll down further down the page, you’ll see a “buy now” button. Somewhere on the sidebar, you will see “read the blog” button. Landing pages are not websites. They are built for one specific call of action that you need from your visitors. Choose between “buy”, “sign-up”, “free trail”, “Visit the blog”, “Subscribe to email”. The empirical rule is to call for one, single action.

Simple Copy is the best copy

Go ahead and check of the best performing landing pages. According to maketingsherpa.com, the landing pages with simplest copy invariably turn out to be winners. These landing pages are easy on the eye, quick, convincing, and very simple in design. You’ll rarely find copy that’s more than a few lines per paragraph and there would barely be any paragraphs there. Keep your landing pages copy very simple. It works like a charm.

Use Video

Dropbox – one of the most iconic start-ups on the Internet till date – has nothing on its homepage (which doubles up as their landing page) except a stick-man video. This video does all the talking and has persuaded more than 50 billion people to sign-up. Video, when used well, can make your conversions off the landing page go through the roof.

Use anything in excess and it shall kill

Some people use too many graphics and animations that sometimes seize the host computer of the user due to excess load on their computer’s CPU. Others use too many videos or a combination of video and then a page full of text (sales letters). When we arrive at a landing page, we just want it quick and easy. We really don’t want to read 3455 words with a cup of coffee in hand, at least not on a landing page. Don’t be mistaken to think that excess is good. On a landing page, less is good.

Why don’t you put up a few of your successful landing pages for me to see? It’d help the readers too. Of course, it’ll be free for you when you post it in the comments, won’t it?

I read his books – almost all of them. I was hooked to his biography Steve Jobs
by Isaac Waalterson Recently. I’ve been reading Leander Kahney’s “Inside Steve’s Brain”.

Every word in these book gently guided me into thinking how freelance writers should chisel out business.

My Clients “Got Steved”

“Get Steved” became a popular term for firing someone on the spot, as Jobs used to do when he came to whack Apple back into its form after being ousted out of his own company. Although he was much more calm and collected after his comeback, he became firm and focused.

In a gutsy move that saw the otherwise confusing and over-populated product matrix reduce to a 2 x 2 grid along with a quiet, mass layoff of staff across Apple, Jobs used to corner employees in elevators (or wherever) and require employees to give good reasons as to why they should stay. When they didn’t, they got fired on the spot.

As a freelance writer, how guilty are you about keeping and working with clients who are more of a drain on your time, efforts, and sanity? If Jobs were to write for a living, he would have fired clients who don’t pay well, on time, and treat freelance writers like scumbags while using content for their benefit.

“Focus means to have the confidence to say No”

Article writing, whitepapers, e-books, blog posts, and writing for the content mills while trying to find better paying markets. We write all the time and we are a blessed lot. Like the spartan engineers at Apple, we have incredible talent. We create products from scratch, just like those engineers do.

It’s just that we don’t treat ourselves fair enough. We stretch our hands out in reverence and complete obeisance to our circumstances and we pick up any writing assignment that comes our way, which includes $3, $5, or $10 articles.

Focus. Say no to writing for junk boards. Take the bold step of standing up for your skill as a freelance writer. It’s alright if 9 out of the 10 pitches/bids/emails/calls/in-person meetings didn’t turn out the way you wanted. Just like Apple focuses on the few areas it does well and pours everything into it, choose a few niche topics you are really good at. The kind of topics you can whip your passion out, throw ideas together cohesively, and bring about a change.

“Uncompromising artistry and superb business chops”

 Steve jobs worked incredibly hard – along with his entire team at Apple – to make sure that the products come out top class. He wasn’t very good with operations. He kept his hands off ‘making movies’ at Pixar and let others do it. Yet, he did what he was good at.

Sweat, blood, and thousands of man-hours later, the iMac was a cultural phenomenon. The iPod, iPhone, and the iPad — along with MacBooks, and the desktops — were all products that blended design, technology, fashion, and art into a single piece you hold in your hands.

 When we writers hammer away at the keyboards, we don’t see the mistakes creeping in. We hate editors so we don’t hire any. We ‘think’ we did a great job. Clients upload the articles or blog posts and we see unpardonable errors. Really, how hard do we work on simple things like proofreading? How many of us hire professional editors to check our writing?

I don’t. I am guilty.

“Don’t run for volumes; create iconic content”

Steve Jobs wanted to create products at the intersection of content, design, and value. While,  Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM (Lenovo), and all other computer manufacturers made — and still make —  products that look like items on the shelves of a dollar store, Apple’s products reek of style, fashion, art blended with sophisticated technology, elegance, and pure performance.

Do we write like that?

I dare you to go to ezinearticles.com and read. Pick any random article — it’s all fluff and complete bullshit. The goal there isn’t to inform or educate readers. It’s to pound on the keyboard until you string 350 words together because some wisecrack realized that Google lusts after those mysterious 350-500 words with keywords thrown in. I am guilty of writing such content too. I took a vow as to never do it again.

I consider taking up graphic design classes only so that I can use graphics for the content I create for my clients. I would like to bring in the visual appeal wherever possible. See how beautiful the free reports from Chris Guillebeau are?

“You are a bunch of idiots”

When doing a survey on the old Mac interface Steve Jobs gathered his team of engineers and said that he hated everything about it.  “No detail was too small” for Jobs when he pored over the seemingly impeccable design of the Interface. He still found fault with the fact that there were too many windows; it appeared to be clumsy, etc. He then asked the team:

“Did you guys design this Interface?”

They answered, “Yes”

He replied “You are a bunch of idiots”

I’d say, “We are idiots”. We don’t see how awful we write sometimes. We crib about lack of opportunities when they are available for the more enterprising ones among us. We mock writers who tend to be perfectionists. Yet, all great brands base their success on perfection.

Who the hell pays for imperfect shit?

“Put Boots to ass to get things done”

That in short was the one-liner that Steve Jobs – the man – believed in. He made it happen. We elite freelance writers, however, don’t do a fraction of the work the man did while rotting our time in forums and other crib pots.

For every one hour required to write 2 articles – each of which fetches $25-$35 — hundreds of freelance writers spend sinful amounts of time tearing the servers down in forums cribbing about the lack of jobs, clients from hell, the apparent thinning of opportunities, and overseas providers undercutting prices.

Staying off those crib cage forums is like fighting nicotine cravings. You can stop for a day, a week, or even a couple of months. But the romance refuses to die.

For every negative forum post, which would have inevitably been a product of feeling and passion, a beautiful article or blog post worth $100 could have been produced.
What say you?

“Don’t listen to your customers”

For the elitist that Steve Jobs was, there were either bozos or geniuses in this world. He believed that his customers were completely dumb and so his ambition was to build products these ‘bozos’ could use, and love. Our clients are bozos too. “They don’t know what they want”. I squirm in pain each time I see a project brief that says:

“Take this article. Rewrite it 3-4 times”

“Keyword should show up on the title, first paragraph, last paragraph, and somewhere in between. Total keyword density 2.34564345 %”

“Write the articles. Put them on spinning software. We will pay you $2.5 for a long, long, time to come”

“No, we don’t need your social media services thank you. Who the heck cares about these Tweets and likes, anyway?”

“It’s an easy job for those who know what they are doing”

“It’s an extremely easy job which shouldn’t take more than 2 hours and I won’t pay more than $12.5 for it”

I will go hungry. I’ll die, but I refuse to work on projects like these. Unfortunately, if my clients come up with these fancy ideas, I politely turn down these requests, cancel projects, and continue to drift towards better clients (or at least clients who understand the value of content because that’s the only thing that can help their business).

How many Google Panda updates do clients need to understand the importance of content?

It is not your competence; it is your nonchalance

Freelancers are a hard-working lot. The reason why we  do ‘freelancing’ and choose not to work for someone else is because we do have expertise and talent. We choose freedom over working for someone else, among various other reasons.If you ever wondered why your business is down and under, it’s clear that lack of business in your case isn’t your competence; it’s because you don’t do marketing. You don’t sell and pitch hard enough to clients, while managing customer relationships.

If you’ve lost a customer, it’s because of you. If you haven’t been able to ask for more prices, it’s your problem. Your freelancing career isn’t as good as it should be because you didn’t bother enough, not because there’s a dearth of clients in the world.

Ask me, I know this better than most people

Re-vitalize your relationships

It so happens that each time I needed work, I would shoot out about 20 emails with a proposal to all possible clients and I usually see about 20 % conversions. There are a lot of those emails answered back by clients and I have not chosen to work with them for some reason or vice-versa.I am sure you’d have some emails hidden away. Now is the time to mail all those clients to let them know that you are open to negotiate and see if business can be reconstituted again?

We fall off the wagon sometimes. We might not be able to work with clients for a few reasons. Project considerations, scope of work, type of work, and budgets — all of these change with time. Go back to clients if you can (I am hoping you didn’t burn your bridges) and ask for more business.

Finding Work is a part of the job

Let’s be humble enough to accept that we don’t have steady paychecks; it doesn’t mean that we let it be that way. Operating from abundance has always been a great thing to do. Bid on projects, solicit projects from businesses or clients in such numbers that you can literally live with late payments.

For this to happen, you simply have to keep finding work even while you are presently working on a few other projects – you’d do well to mark out an hour everyday just shooting your proposals or querying your way to acquire clients. Freelancing then, will no more remain the unsteady nightmare as most people dread it to be.

Be prepared to slog it off

As freelancers, our lives can be as tough or as easy as we want it to be. You will see that you put in a lot of hours in a day. I do.

While the rest of the people have holidays and weekends, most freelancers — like you and I — don’t have a single holiday, so to speak. Thanks to the time constraints and tight schedules most freelancers work on, it calls for tremendous amount of concentration, focus, determination and hard-work to ensure that the work gets done in time, and well.

If you weren’t doing it until now, it is time to wake up and let the keyboard ring. Put in the time. Work on the numbers. Consider managing your time well, get more productive, and do what 3 people do in a single day.

Marketing your freelance business is a game of numbers

Assuming each client is worth $500 for you.You email, call, bid, yell, and beat your chest to 10 clients per day. Assuming your conversion ratio is 10%, ONE client will buy.

10 clients or projects pitched per day = 1 client on an average with a monetary value of $500.

In a month:

10 X 20 working days = 200 clients pitched to, in total.

200 X 10%  (conversion rate) = 20 clients who  buy @ 500 USD worth of services from you

= $10000

I don’t know about you, but with this kind of money (and absolutely no overheads), I can travel the world and be richer then most people  in just a few years. Who says writers don’t make money, eh?

Be the best at what you do; write awesome, linkable content

Be on top of whatever you are doing. You have to make sure that your clients know your worth. Without you, there ought to be a flutter at your client’s office. Be indispensable and irreplaceable. That’s your value added. You will have to work hard to maintain it that way. Look to enhance this worth. Invest enough time and effort on yourself.  Improve your skills by learning, practicing and applying often enough.I really like what some of these guys do when writing content. I learnt it from them. I think you should too.

See some of my favorites here (this list is not even the beginning; I have over 2000 RSS feeds on Google Reader):

Freelance Writing, Writing for the web, Copywriting 

Sean Platt at Ghostwriterdad.com

Kristi Haines at Kikolani.com

Dana Prince at  The Freelance Writer’s Blog. She also contributes at Future Simple.

Online Marketing, Traffic, Social Media, etc

Marcus Sheridan at Saleslion.com

Danny Iny at Firepolemarekting.com

Corbett Barr at ThinkTraffic.com along with his team of writers such as Caleb Wojcik, Rick Mulready, and Gregory Ciotti.

Jason Acidre at Kaiserthesage.com 

Affiliate Marketing

Geno Prussakov

The Mthink Magazine (this is a multi-authored business information site)

Revenews 

You get the idea, don’t you?

Use a Free trial (Free Trail for freelance writing services, are you kidding me?) 

Once upon a time, when I used to be a trainer one of the modules I used to train on was career skills that included “How to Succeed in Interviews and group discussions“.

I used to challenge my delegates saying:

“If you are so damned good, go up to those companies and tell them that you’d work for free for a week/month/3 months”.

Further, tell them:

“If you like my work and if you think I have it in me, which I do, would you pay me what I ask for? Of course, I’ll be reasonable but not inexpensive”

Why not use a free trial for your freelance business? Speaking for freelance writers, what on earth is stopping you from letting clients have you work for them for a week, on trial? Alternatively, have them commit a token amount (refundable) and then start working. If they like your work, they continue. If they don’t take back the rights to your work and return the token amount.

Note: Before you start your free trial, pick up all the information about clients. Their websites, contact details, etc. In case they do the vanishing act at any point without being fair, you’ll have an opportunity to defame them, draw a media blitzkrieg, and literally give them sleepless nights ( this doesn’t happen much, as I see it)

Don’t just write about social media, use it for your own business

It’s funny that we freelance writers spend time on social media but barely have anything to write home about it. Apart from all the sweet, nice things I mention in a guest post at Andy Nathan’s blog “5 Simple Secrets to Social Media Success” that you should do on social media, there’s a little more that I didn’t mention: ask for business. On Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In, just go out there ( in the middle of a mountain of valuable content, generous sharing of others’ Tweets, intelligent conversations, and blooming relationships) and ASK for business.

Here’s what I did:

Or maybe, like this:

It’s alright to ask for business in the middle of the usual humdrum of social media activity. Hell, if you don’t ask, just how would clients know?

As to my questions on Twitter, there was no response. I am not giving up.

Develop channels for marketing your business 

You don’t need to buy e-books or take special courses to find clients online ( I would love to take up the courses, if only I had enough money). One way to get what you want is to “buy” your way in; the other way is to earn it and fight from the trenches. I choose the latter because that’s the only way I could survive. Say, how many channels do you have for marketing your business?

Choose one channel and dare come to depend on it and you’ll get the shock of your life if it tanks. Some of the most common channels that I use are:

• Social Media  (Twitter, Facebook, and Linked In)
• Freelance Job Boards such as Elance and Guru. I don’t like Odesk, just FYI.
• Other Job Boards (Freelance Switch Job Board, Flexjobs, Indeed, Problogger.net, Blogging Pro, etc)
• The directories – Dmoz, Yahoo, and the best of the web.
• Digging up old clients from your inbox.
• Email marketing (just started this one, will update on how it goes).
• The Blog
• Cold emailing Random new clients (each time I come across a new web-based business, I pitch)
• Dailyarticle.com
• Constant-content.com

Special mention for constant-content.com : I used to be on constant-content.com for a while. They blocked my account for no darned reason. They still owe me $13. I choose to ignore it and avoided the temptation to write a scathing review titled

“Constant-content: Not a Scam; they are just Monopolistic, too tight-a*****, and might just steal your money“.

Because something could go wrong with your primary channels of marketing, develop alternatives. You’ll never regret you did it.

Write a book (even an e-book will do) 

Writing a book — be it trade publishing or self-publishing — is one of the best ways to establish expertise on a subject of your choice. You don’t have to be a paperback or a hardcover, bestselling author to showcase your work to potential clients. Thanks to technology that got us KDP ( Kindle Digital Publishing), Smashwords, Apple iBooks, E-PUB, and even audibles.com, there are plenty of ways to self-publish today. All you need is a manuscript, an editor, a professional cover design, and you are in the game.

I know. I heard you asking. I will plan to write a book too. I will self-publish one day for sure.

Need help? Look no further than:

Mark Coker’s Smashwords Style Guide: How to Format Your E-book

and

How to Self-Publish, and Why You Should: Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran.

Try to Pitch for the big boys while working on what you should

There are three things we should strive to do each day:

• Sacred work — the freelancing work that pays the bills and keeps you sane. This is should be as much as it should be to keep you happy. For some, $500 would be enough. For others, $8000 is still making ends meet. You are the better judge.
• Happy work — all the extra channels of marketing begin to work for you. Clients come in through social media, your blog, emails, and your cold calling or cold emailing strategy works. This is good for you. I call it “happy work”
• Ego-massaging work — Pitching to trade publishers to get your book done, writing a book and publishing it, updating your blog regularly, pitching to big magazines such as Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Inc, Business Week, National Geographic, Wall Street, Smart Money, etc., is ego-massaging work. It not only takes your level as a freelancer by several nothces, but also marks a new beginning for your career.

Each day’s work distribution : 60% sacred work + 30% happy work + 10% ego-massaging work

Works for you, will it?

HeadSpace

Has SEO for WordPress befuddled you before? Were you at a loss for what else could be done to your blog so as to make it even more search engine friendly than it already is? Would you like just one plugin to take care of all your SEO needs?

Head Space Plugin for wordpress is your Meta information manager allowing you to tweak your home page, search pages, 404 pages, posts, standalone pages, categories, tags or keywords, and page titles. It also allows you to add Google Analytics code, additional CSS and Javascript files, and allows you to work with other popular plugins such as Ultimate Tag warrior, Simple Tagging, and All-In-One SEO.

 WordPress SEO by Yoast

 WordPress, as such, is already search engine friendly, right out of the box. You can improve it further on all aspects of SEO by using WordPress SEO by Yoast. It helps you optimize your WordPress blog technically, lets you know if your titles are too short or too long, increase your click-through rates, allow you a deeper insight into analytics and page analysis, and much more.

The best thing about the plugin is it that it helps you fill the void that WordPress itself could not do for you. WordPress SEO helps you play around with the permalinks, inserts and optimizes meta tags for your content, automatically converts your links into canonical links, adds rel=”next” and rel = “prev”’ link elements in the head of your paginated archives, and much more.

Slick Social Share Buttons

Did you ever want a single, non-intrusive list of particularly useful and popular social media buttons to slide out while the readers read your post? Slick social Share Buttons plugin does just that: While your visitors or readers read your blog posts, the plugin rolls out a chosen list of large social media buttons. All they have to do then is to click on one or more of those buttons. That’s a lot of social media love.

Tweet Blender

Most of the Twitter widgets aren’t impressive, really. One Twitter plugin stands out and it’s called Tweet Blender. Show your own Tweets, Show others’ Tweets, pull in tweets based on #hash tags, keywords you define, or particularly important Twitter profiles that you want to hear from right on your blog. You can blend them all into a single Twitter steam widget display on your blog or separate them and have multiple streams displayed through your pages. It’s almost like little branches off the main twitter stream operating on your blog.

W3Total Cache

Google places a lot of importance on blog pages that load faster.  It’s another factor that Google considers when rendering your pages with a page rank. W3 Total Cache allows you to load your blog pages faster. It saves the static version of your site on the server to make this happen. Further, it draws much less CPU power than what WordPress CMS originally uses. If you ever wanted your blog to load faster, this is the WordPress plugin you should be looking at.

Thank Me later

Email marketing is one of the most powerful, potent and cost-effective ways to promote your blog. With some plugins, WordPress users can have it much easier. A simple plugin such as Thank Me later allows you to automatically send an email to your visitors who leave comments on your blog. Almost like a full-fledged auto responder and as an email-marketing provider, this plugin allows you to customize and configure your emails, the frequency and content of these emails to your active visitors. It’s time to boost your visitor engagement by several notches, don’t you think?

Livefyre

Do you want to take social engagement on your blog to the next level? Use Livefyre. It’s a real-time conversation platform that integrates directly into your blog where the comments section usually shows up. Users can start commenting and these comments automatically find their way into their respective twitter accounts. It allows tagging and that pulls your visitors through their respective Facebook and Twitter accounts right back to your blog.

Tweet and Get it (Newly Updated)

@wpbeginner pointed me to this amazing plugin called “Tweet and Get it”. This plugin takes the place of the good old, email auto responder. Instead of your readers having to give an email address to download a free report, file, or any other digital deliverable, you can have them follow you on Twitter first before sending out the digital download or file to them. The workings of the plugin has been explained very well here at “Get Twitter followers in Exchange for Downloadable files in WordPress” at WpBeginner.com.

I can’t wait to try it out with my new, free e-book(about to be released).

Please do feel free to comment and add any other plugins that you thought helped you tremendously. I’ll update the list here and give you due credit, of course.

How powerful is that? Her book itself is a result of community power. Further, the book cover came from the Whuffie, so she says. Social media is here to stay and you’ll be comfortable if you found yourself a lofty corner to be perched at. Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In are huge and can be intimidating to everyone. It doesn’t have to be so. You can literally announce your arrival. This is how you do it:

Give, and then take

When I wrote a guest post titled “5 Simple Secrets to Social Media Success“on Andy Nathan’s Blog, I couldn’t help but mull on this little aspect about social media. It’s strikingly obvious that no one cares about you, at least not right away. It could be downright depressing and blunt to hear this. Really, everyone out there has something else to worry about and the last thing would be you. That’s why shift your intentions from “taking” to “giving”. Don’t ask for anything in return (you might want to make requests here and there) but give information and share valuable resources. Write and then share your blog posts, Facebook Fan Page updates, and Tweets.

Be Generous

When others within your community or network such as fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter or LinkedIn share something, promote those tweets or updates. Promote them like they are your own. It might not make sense to you now but when others see that you promote their content, they will eventually want to reciprocate. Check your Klout score regularly and give +K to people who’ve influenced you on your network. As TechCrunch makes a point, Nobody gives a damn about your Klout score. Use it to benchmark your progress, donate +Ks to people as a sign of gratitude. Just don’t think that high Klout score is somehow going to make you rich.

Be a leader and Follower

Most beginners come with the intention of learning from the community and implementing it for themselves seeking a reward of some sort – -fame, recognition, money, etc. While some do it right, most do it wrong. You can follow and “like” as many people as you like. Just don’t think all others out there are better than you or worse than you.

It’s a level playing field, today.

Some are better than you. Most aren’t. I trust that you have things they don’t. They know about stuff you don’t. That’s why social media – and the Internet itself – is as empowering as you want it to be.

Lead from the front. Make it a responsibility to educate, inspire, and share with your followers. If you are a business – irrespective of the size of your company – you are an expert poised to solve people’s problems.

Be Yourself

Kim Garst – a social media aficionado, consultant, blogger, and entrepreneur – is someone I Follow on Twitter. She puts out this message more often than anyone else I know of. She advocates the need to be YOU.
When you fake it, your tricks will eventually grow too big to fit in the decorum of normalcy. Your true colors will show through. With stakes in business and reputation, you can’t afford to do that, can you?

Focus on a clutch of sites

The sphere of social media is huge. Not every social media site will work for you. For me, Foursquare really means nothing to  since it’s more geographic specific.  Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook work best for me. I am still wondering how Google + fits in. For some businesses outside the U.S, Yelp will not work. You get the drift, don’t you?

Less is more

Much like the Pareto’s principle, “less is more” is proving to have universal connotations. Doing too much of anything can only hurt you. Don’t rush your Twitter account with 120 Tweets a day because it’ll look like spam (in spite of your apparent enthusiasm to share). Don’t deluge your Facebook Fan Page wall with 20 messages a day (you don’t need to). Also, you don’t need to post everyday on your blog (content quality suffers with increasing frequency).

Develop a strategy. Much like this:

Blogs – 3 per week posting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Twitter – 1 hour per day
Facebook – 30 minutes per day [15 minutes extra for answering questions and responding to comments] Linked In [You decide]

Engage

Mitch Joel, in his book, Six Pixels of Separation , puts it very well:“Connecting is Not Engaging”. He urges not to get confused between the two. Your mere presence on a social media network doesn’t mean that you are adding any value to your network. You have to do much more than that. You must make your social media network presence sizzle, as Debbie Rein of Instant Web Results puts it.

Talk about “Engagement” and I can’t help but think about Danny Iny of Engagement from Scratch. I linked to his Free Ebook download so many times that I took a permanent decision to have a ScribD frame right here so you can read his book. It’s awesome. You can download it from here .

Leverage tools

It’s exciting just to think of the booty treasure that we are blessed with today. Look at these 10 Killer Web Apps You Can use for your business. Perhaps, you would like to peruse through these 10 exclusive Social media tools for your business?

Maybe you have this huge crush on Facebook? See these  tools you can use to make a Facebook Fan page in style?

Life’s better and you get more productive using these tools for your business. It’s a no-brainer. I trust you take that seriously. Book mark this blog and keep coming back often for more updates.

Dave Balter CEO of BzzAgent
Robyn Waters : Author of The Trend Master’s Guide
Jay Parkinson: co-founder of Hello Health and founding partner in Future Well.

and many more.

In particular, I loved “Nobody” by Micah Sifry(@mlsif), founder of Personal Democracy Forum. I loved it so much that I thought I should list it here on the blog.

Do go ahead and see the e-book here. Make sure you download it. Spread the word; that would be awesome.

What Matters Now

Engagement Builder Pro (Social Bakers CMS)

If you are a small business and if you wanted a complete solution from ground up without you having to worry about the nitty-gritty of putting up a Facebook fan page and then having to manage it all the time, I found that the Engagement Builder Pro (Social baker CMS) does more than just help you put up a Fan Page: it can manage your multiple Facebook Fan Pages for you, help you schedule your wall postings, allow you to manage a team of social media managers and assign specific roles with relevant rights, and manage responses to the postings on the wall.  You may also use any of your other custom applications.

Lujure

This is the tool I’ve used for the Fetchprofits Facebook Fan Page. I know it doesn’t look very impressive but that’s not because of Lujure; it’s because I can’t do more than that. Lujure helps you set-up your Facebook Fan Page quickly (I took 3 minutes to do mine), and efficiently. You don’t need to know any code, it’s super-fast, and with just drag-and-drop functionality. You can’t have it easier than that, can you? Further, they have a free plan that allows one Fan Page, one tab, and the free plan comes with “Lujure” branding.

Wild Fire App

I have a confession to make: I am totally in love with their website. There’s something classy, simple and elegant about their website and that made me stare at the screen for ages before typing this out. They have plenty of products to choose from: promotion builder, page manager, and an analytics application. Wildfire app seems to be the best choice for promotions especially and their minimum price seems to be $5 + $0.99 and going up to $250 for a single promotion.

Although they do have a powerful Fan Page Manager, I couldn’t see their pricing unless I “request a demo”.

PageModo

I mentioned Pagemodo in a free report I plan to give away for free to you in a short while. If you’d like to see who’s using PageModo and how the end result looks like, they have an examples page  you can check out. You may upload videos and have reveal pages that open up after potential fans “like” your Fan Page, etc. You might want to integrate your Twitter feed, display a map & location info, and use “Fan Coupons” if you wish to promote your products and services. They do have a free plan for personal use but you are limited to one tab and one fan page.  The free plan also comes with their branding in the footer area.

North Social

North Social is one of my favorite Facebook Fan Page creators and it has a suite of applications that it’s on my wish list currently. The visual appeal of their applications is one of the best I’ve seen so far. The only glitch is that it’s a paid service and I don’t see any free plan in their pricing structure. Paying for their service is totally worth it. Yet another annoyance is that you buy a separate plan for each of your Facebook Fan Pages.

If you have 3 Facebook Fan Pages for three different brands, you will need three separate accounts with North Social. That makes it kind of hard for me to invest in this service if I have clients asking for complete social media solutions unless I include this amount while invoicing.

Involve Social

While most free plans allow you to manage Fan Pages with limited applications, Involve Social’s free plan allows you complete access to its applications. Involve social also allows you multi-fan page support – something that other tools don’t allow you especially on a free plan. Of course, there’s a lot that Involve social offers to its paid subscribers such as enterprise-grade scalability, viral analytics, custom themes, and custom headers.

Involver

First off, Involver isn’t just for Facebook Fan pages; they have an entire collection of applications for all popular social media and other engagement channels such as You tube, ScribD, Twitter and even Klout. They have plenty of basic applications that are free and self-serving. They also have a ‘Coupons’ application that works on your Facebook Fan page. Head over to their applications list and pick the one you want to work with.

You may visit my Facebook Fan Page and I’d love it if you click on “Like” and be a fan. Have you created a Facebook Fan Page? I’d love to see them here. Would you mind posting your Fan Page links so I can “Like” them?

Yudu 

If you are a publisher, you know that success lies in variety. If all you do is write blogs that are plain text, it’s not really an exciting thing to do. If you’ve ever read Website Magazine or any of the publications from Zinio, Winning The Web Magazine, you might have liked the digital, page-turning Interface that they use. There’s a free application (ok, they have a paid version too) called Yudu – a digital publishing platform, a library, and a marketplace.

Using a state-of-the-art publishing system, it allows you to self-publish your content and share it, sell it, or just show off to your potential readers, clients, etc. For publishers, it would mean:

• More ways to showcase creative work
• More opportunities to share content
• Potential to make money selling content directly, etc.

For companies, Individual professionals, small business owners, and Bloggers:

• Create content in a different format
• Sell e-books or reports, publish white papers, or
• Prepare free e-reports to give away.

FlipSnack

A curious cat that I am, I went looking for more publications like Yudu. I found flipsnack – a web app that’s a part of the overall suite of applications at snacktools. I first heard about them when they had this cool BannerSnack tool that helps you make banners for Internet Marketing.

It’s easy to register and create your digital document almost as good as the professional ones you see online today ( you have nothing to do with Adobe Suite of products, can you believe that?).

All you need is a PDF document and you can make magic. I had an old PDF document on “How Much Should I Charge?”, for freelance writers. Nothing fancy, just a plain PDF document. See how it looks like after FlipSnack renders it. You may download it too, if you like.

If you unable to see the document above for some reason. You may click here to check it out.

Zemanta 

Most of you might already know Zemanta — it’s a web app that helps you to enrich your blog posts in real time, while you are writing them. I remember using it for a client once upon a time.

You can try it for free and see how you like it. They have upwards of over 10 million photos and tens of thousands of blogs and news sites that it would recommend to you when you go typing on your keyboard. It works across platforms and it also has a WordPress plugin so it should be easy to use.

Zemanta makes it easy for you to link to other active bloggers. It’s NLP ( natural language Processing) proprietary technology analyzes what you write and identifies active bloggers with content waiting to be linked to, shared, etc. It results in natural link building, pumps your traffic, helps you network, and boosts your SEO.

BoostPost 

Social media is time consuming, isn’t it? Boostpost is social ranking button widget that helps your readers to vote on the “value” of a link, expands publisher outreach, allows you add or remove buttons as you join(and unjoin) new social media networks. It also helps you to monetize your social media links using a “boostpage”. You can get the Boostpost widget here.

Tarpipe

Do you feel that you are spending too much time on Social Media? Wouldn’t it be nice to  develop content and deliver to your multiple social media accounts instantly without having to log in to each network and do it manually?

It’s time to automate.Tarpipe is a web app that lets you do just that. You can create workflows — defined as a the visual description how your content should from from source to destination — and then easily publish content on several social media destinations. Further, all of those unending streams of content across platforms will reside in a backlog.

They have a free account allowing 2 destinations ( 2 separate social media channels) and then have paid plans if you need more than that.

Dlvr.it 

As you must have guessed by now, I am an “alternative man”. Dlvr. it is another web application that helps you to post your blog content to your multiple social media accounts.

You may also gauge your audience engagement, your reach across networks, the impact your tweets or your Facebook Fan Page shares would have had on your followers and fans, and much more. Real time stats and automatic integration to multiple social accounts is a blessing, isn’t it?

See if dlvr.it is something you might like?

Logoease 

Creating a logo is always a tricky thing. If it isn’t tricky, it’s important, expensive, and your branding almost depends on it. If you have an in-house design team or if you can afford a contractor/vendor to do the logos for you,it’s all well and good.

What if you don’t? I didn’t have the logo design skills nor could I afford a logo designer. I had to rely on free web-based alternative like Sumo Paint. You can see how crappy, depressing and unprofessional my logo is, can’t you?

It looks like Logoease can solve your problem, if you are like me, that is. featuring a simple, design interface you can now create your logo — as many as 10 different versions at one time —  within minutes. They even send out files in various formats back to you.

BidSketch 

Are you a freelancer, business owner, or a sales person? If you are, you do know that first impressions matter. Further, almost everyone uses email or a normal word document to send out a proposal. Why not make your proposals stand out? BidSketch allows you to create professional proposals in minutes.

Keep all your proposals in one place, play around with the designs, tweak your sections, format to hearts content, export it to PDF and render your proposals on a “web view” in a special portal created just for you and your client. Your clients just fire up the proposal on their browser and even send you comments on it.

That’s awesome, isn’t it?

Smartsheet 

If you are familiar with excel, you’ll love SmartSheet. I first used it when a client gave me access to it when I working on their content and I had to work with a team of other collaborators, web designers, and freelance writers(like myself). It’s a super-charged, excel spreadsheet like “The Hulk” — their green color interface made me think about it

Project Management, sales invoicing and pipeline management, task management, human resources,crowd sourcing, IT management, online work management — you name it, smart sheet can do it for you. It can also integrate with Salesforce and Google Apps, if that’s your kind of thing.

Bubbl.us 

It’s been 1.5 years since I know and use this application but I still can’t type it out right. I still use Google to find it. Only recently, I bookmarked it

Mind Mapping is an incredibly effective way to communicate what you “think”, or explain “concepts” to your clients, readers, or even to your granny. There are plenty of web applications for mind mapping.

Bubble.us is a free mind mapping solution I stumbled over years go and I still use it when I have to share my ideas with my clients. It’s free, and it’s web based. Dabble, create a mind map, and download it to your computer.

Please do share any of your favorite applications. I’d love to hear from you.