Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 335 SOBs

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her to me. Thie award carries a “Liz said so” guarantee, is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and is backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

How To Create One Way Inbound Backlinks

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Successfully Working From a Home-based Office

Backlinks are those links which directs users towards your website or blog. Backlink is an important term with respect to SEO; it effectively increases the creditability of your website. Search engines tend to look for these backlinks to rank the websites in their page. But the backlinks should be from the niche where your website resides. Effectively backlinks is considered a tool to increase the page rank of a website.

How To Create One Way Inbound Backlinks

There are methods to create inbound backlinks of your website:

1. Creating a blog is one of simplest way to generate backlinks for your website. A blog is a dynamic website where the content keeps on changing. A professional blog can help you attract traffic as well. Post quality and researched content about your services or products to glue in your readers. This will also compel others bloggers to link to it and you can benefit with the quality backlinks.

2. Participating in forums in your niche can help you in gathering backlinks. Forum participating exposes your website to a different set of audiences. Readers from these forums will increase the bounce back rate of your website too. While registering for different forums do link your website as you submit the solutions for different queries. Register in multiple forums and participate in them regularly. You can even submit your articles to different web directories. If your article gets selected, web directories are a fast means to attract the backlinks.

3. Guest posting is an important step in gathering quality backlinks for your site. There are number of websites and blog which exchange one or two backlinks in exchange of a guest post. When guest posting the articles, target those websites which rank higher in your niche. Higher ranked websites will help you in bringing not only traffic but will expose your brand as well.

4. Creating free products or services can help you to create a buzz in your niche while driving backlinks as well. Creating professional videos can be another method. Upload a quality video on you tube and let the users share them on their websites. While uploading videos be certain that they are of professional quality, this will increase the number of backlinks.

5. Social media submissions can help in gathering the inbound backlinks. Social platforms such as Digg and Google+ are few examples of such media. If you mange to reach the front page of Digg, you might be getting heavy backlinks and traffic in quick time. Start commenting on various articles, acknowledge the shouts of various people and submit unique and catchy articles on the community. Making to the first page of Digg will require hard work and most importantly smart work.

While looking for inbound backlinks concentrate on the quality and not the quantity of the links. A 100 low quality backlink would be equivalent to 5-6 high quality backlinks. Be aware of the low quality websites as links from these sites will work as a negative factor. Apart from these tips, commenting on other websites and blog will increase the number of backlinks as well.

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Author’s Bio:
Brianne is a freelance writer who often writes about acronym maker and ipad docking station. She also has written a number of articles on technology and social media. You can find her on Twitter @Brianne.

Thank you, Brianne!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

When the going gets tough — The Tough don‒t give a damn

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For quite some days, I’ve been caught in a writers’ block. Now, I am a web content writer and writing is my bread and butter. But despite the fact that I felt like writing, and I had quite some ideas to write on, and I felt pretty much capable to write, still I just kept failing at it, failing to put my pen to paper, just like a bird caught under a cast net, who knows and feels he can fly but fails miserably when trying to take off. And there I was, dawdling for weeks and hoping that all of a sudden, the “net” will disappear and I will be able to take to the air … How wrong was I and how wrong is everybody else who thinks procrastinating will somehow put an end to the predicament they are facing.

Problem with dilly-dallying and waiting for the right time is … it never arrives, the time just keeps flying by, and when you are aware that something needs to be done, the passing moments will just keep adding to the pressure, and the mounting pressure will make it even harder for you to do anything about it. And that is exactly what I was going through, and it’s not that it was the first time. In fact, the pressure cooker situations are quite frequent since my early years of education, the time when exams or final dates for assignments were fast approaching and I had spent all the time procrastinating and waiting for my geniuses to arrive (and I am still waiting …). These are the times when it gets tougher and tougher as the time pass, and getting depressed doesn’t help at all, you know that you’ve got to do something, but knowing that “I’ve got to act fast” only adds to the problem.

So what’s the best way to break the shackles, and to avoid giving in to the pressure?

To be honest, there’s a very easy way out. All you need is to follow two simple steps, first give a damn to the circumstances, and second get down and start doing something about it. Problem with getting bogged down by the circumstances is that you get stuck in the paradigm and get paralyzed. It transpires into a downward spiral and you start to fall short at everything, you fail to do a post on a topic when it’s hot, you can’t cash in on a trend or platform when it’s relatively new, you don’t get to pitch your product or services to some potential client you’ve stumbled upon, the opportunities keep slipping away and it gets even harder to come out of the trap, in spite the fact that most of the times, there’s no real trap, it’s all between the ears, a decoy that you shouldn’t even bother about in the first place.

The take-home point for this post is best described in the old adage …”when the going gets tough, the tough gets going” but what I was looking to add is to stop bothering about the tough goings as soon as you’ve got down to work, because if you do, the resulting panic will start consuming the much needed energy and time. So, from now on, when the devil throws the “cast net” by reminding you of the circumstances, you can simply dodge it by not giving a damn and continuing with your work.

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Author’s Bio:

Rahil of www.WeightLossTriumph.com is an Internet Marketing expert and a part time writer. We specializes in reviews of weight loss programs and diet plans. His blog is affiliated with merchants in the diet niche. Part of his marketing strategy involves featuring stories of people who have lost weight successfully and kept it off.

Dear American Worker, Are You Pessimistic On Your Retirement Plans?

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The last few years have brought some unwanted news for many American workers and that does not appear to be changing anytime soon.

According to a recently released report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), worries regarding one’s job security and mountains of debt are leaving many American more doubtful than ever when it comes to their retirement.

The recent EBRI survey (approximately 1,270 workers and retirees ages 25 and up) shows that a mere 14 percent of workers claim to be “very confident” they will have enough money to live a comfortable life during their retirement years. Meantime, 38 percent of workers claim to be “somewhat confident” and 23 percent report they are “not at all confident.”

According to many of the survey respondents, current priorities trump retirement plans at this point and time.

Job Security a Major Concern

The survey shows that approximately 42 percent of respondents claim a lack of job security is the number one issue they are facing, with only 28 percent of workers claiming to feel very confident they will be gainfully employed for as long as necessary. Lastly, 62 percent of workers report that their debt is their biggest challenge now.

Money put away for retirement is a big obstacle right now for many American workers, as approximately 60 percent of those surveyed report having total savings and investments of less than $25,000 (excluding the value for their residence and defined benefit plans). Even scarier, nearly 30 percent of these respondents claim to have less than $1,000 in their savings.

According to an EBRI spokesperson, “A lot of the people who have either lost their jobs or are worried about losing their jobs are trying to put a little money away for a rainy day and just don’t have money to put into savings right now.”

High Health Care Costs Prove a Burden

One of the major factors right now eating away at available money to put into savings are high health care costs. According to the survey, only 13 percent of respondents state they are very confident they will be able to meet medical expenses when their working days are over. Meantime, just 26 percent of workers claim to be very confident that they will even have the necessary funds to cover basic expenses.

As the American population ages, the irony of the health care issue is that advances in that very area leads to longer life expectancy for millions and millions of people. Living longer lives also means needing to put away more money in order to meet those needs.

With retirement funds scarce for many American workers, more and more are delaying retirement in order to keep a regular paycheck coming in, while increasing their Social Security benefits by waiting to ages 67 and 70 to start taking benefits.

On the down side of that idea, approximately half of current retirees report they exited the workforce unexpectedly due to health matters, a disability, or an employer that let workers go or even ceased operations.

So before gloom and doom set in from reading these numbers, the report does point out that more employers are automatically enrolling workers in retirement plans such as 401 (k)s, with many of those companies increasing contribution levels on a yearly basis.

EBRI’s spokesman pointed out that “We continue to find that employees lucky enough to be working for an employer that sponsors retirement plans — and who choose to take advantage of it — are not only much more likely to have a significantly higher amount of retirement savings, but also much higher confidence.”

As an American worker, what do you view your retirement to be like?

Are you confident today that you will have enough money for tomorrow or should you be doing A, B, and C to right your financial ship moving forward?

Photo credit: gobankingrates.com

Dave Thomas, who covers among other topics workers compensation and credit card processing, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

3 Email Subject Lines Lies that Lose My Business

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Give Me a Thief Before a Liar

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I don’t like liars.

My mother used to say,

Give me a thief before a liar, because then I’ll know what he took.

I don’t like people who say things to purposefully mislead my thinking.
If you want me to read what you send me, then do the honest work that will get my attention.

Don’t lie to me.
It will backfire every time.

3 Email Subject Lines Lies that Lose My Business

Sometimes I wonder who’s teaching the folks who write email subject lines that if they trick us into opening the email, that we’ll be so excited about what’s inside we’ll forget that the subject line was a lie. Here are three lies that come in subject lines, that had the emails had other subject lines I might have considered what was offered.

A Special Offer for Only Our Best Customers

One big company likes to use this one. The first time it came to me. I thought I might find something special, but I clicked through to find an ordinary sale — a sale with prices available to anyone who visited their site. I didn’t feel so special. It made me feel like they thought I was stupid. No sale!!

A Partnership Opportunity

They send an email saying if we’re interested in a partnership, we should respond. Then. they’ll send details. Even the smallest research reveals that what they want is someone to write blog posts for $5.00/each. That’s less of a partnership than working a register in the food service industry.

And then my favorite …

Following Up

To received an email with this subject line, from someone who’s never contacted me is an outright lie. Not only will I not do business with the person who sent it, but I’ve on occasion been moved to call her to tell her why.

A lie might get me to open your email, but it won’t get my business.
It will make you unforgettable as someone I don’t want to do business with.
It’s clever in the same way as shooting yourself in the foot is.

Do you know other email subject line lies?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

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How to blog series

The Key is Know What You Want to Say

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Recently someone told me that he’s been trying to write a a blog post for almost a week now and every time he tired he ended deleting it.

“Everything I write sounds like a valley girl talking to alien first grader. Nothing makes sense. It’s all over the place.”

“What is it that you want to say?”

He started at me and then admitted, “I don’t know.”

It’s hard to write clearly if you don’t know what you want to say.

Try constructing an idea like a three-course meal.

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

If you think of an article or a presentation as a fine meal, the middle is the main course. That’s where the fine dining is. It’s the centerpiece. The entree takes the longest time and the most care. The executive chef is the one who plans it and prepares it. Put your best effort there–where it counts.

So decide what you’ll be serving as the key part of the meal first thing.

  • Is it something you’ve just learned, observed, or read about that’s set you thinking?
  • Is it a pattern of behavior that keeps appearing that you want highlight and encourage or discourage?
  • Could it be your view about an event you’re about to be attending?
  • Have noticed something in another industry that seems to apply to the one that you work in?
  • Have you found a solution to a common problem or a problem with a commonly promoted solution?

Gather the thoughts and proofs that will make the message of your post or presentation delicious to take in. Once you’ve got that underway, you can choose the appetizer and the dessert.

Maybe you’ll whet the audience’s appetite with a story that brings them to the problem you’re solving or a question that you’ll answer fully in a very satisfying ending. Take the time to see how the beginning and end compliment each other to tie all together.

In this manner …

  • Course 1: Give readers a taste of your topic. This gives you a chance to capture their attention and focus their minds on your ideas. You can draw them in and prepare them for what you are about to say. By starting in the middle you already know what that is. So writing this part is much easier.
  • Course 2: Serve up your ideas with facts and details to support them. By starting in the middle, you can spend your time polishing the finer points and placing your brand in the best light for readers to discover its value on their own.
  • Course 3: Leave your audience satisfied with tidbits of why your ideas are important to them or give them reason to reflect back on what you said. Show that you fulfilled your promise. Let your audience savor the fact that your article was a service to them, and they’ll understand why coming back to see you is a good idea.

There’s added value in presenting your information as a three-course article. Starting in the middle establishes a clear structure that’s easy to follow. It frees your audience to concentrate on the information that reveals your story and shows your expertise.

How do you structure your blog posts and your presentations?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!