Kelli

How To Embed a PDF As A Viewable Image

August 30, 2013 by Kelli

What do you do if you want to put your sales flier on your site, but you want it to look like the sales flier and not some clickable link?

You’ve spent a lot of time and/or money crafting a beautiful sales flier. You’ve got it saved as an Adobe .pdf file that people can download and print. But you want the actual information and the graphics to show up on the website along with that link.

It’s easy to do this using Google Docs Viewer. I’m going to walk you through the process, step by step.

1 – Edit or Add the page where you want your pdf file to be posted.

2 – Click the “Add Media” button at the top of the Edit window. Upload your pdf file.

3 – Copy the link URL for the document. You might also just click “Insert into post” at this point and it will add the clickable link for the document. Here’s a link to the pdf file. Embedding a pdf as a viewable image

4 – Open a new browser window or tab and go to Google Docs Viewer.

5 – Paste the document URL in the “Enter a document URL below to generate a link to view it” box.

6 – Click “Generate link”

7 – Copy the code snippet from the box “For an embedded viewer, use this HTML tag instead:” It will look a little weird, but it should include the beginning <iframe> and the ending </iframe> code.

8 – Go to your WordPress page where you are editing the page. Click on the “Text” tab in the upper right corner of your editing box. You might see some strange looking code here. This is the html code for the page. Don’t mess with it.

9 – Go to the bottom of the text and paste the code snippet.

10 – Click Update or Publish. Note, if all you do is preview the changes, you won’t see the pdf in the preview. That’s normal behavior.

11 – Click on “View Page”

You should now see your pdf and it should look like this:

Need a kickstart for your business blog? I have a challenge for you

January 28, 2013 by Kelli

Last August, a couple of friends and I challenged ourselves to blog every single day. That’s 31 posts in 31 days. I mentioned it in my blog for the massage industry and invited all of them to join us. Over 60 massage therapists did! Most of them followed through and completed the challenge winning bragging rights and a cool trophy provided by Eric Brown, one of the bloggers taking the challenge.

WHAT BECAME OF ALL OF THOSE BLOGGERS?

I’ve heard from several of them who have seen some pretty amazing outcomes because of their business blogging. One has a new corporate contract because a local health care facility found her blog. One has a new writing gig because her posts demonstrated her writing skill and style. One has new clients because his website now ranks better in Google. One got back into her writing habit.

More stories pop up every week. More massage therapists are making use of this wonderful marketing tool called blogging and it’s helping their bottom line.

WE’RE NOT TALKING ABOUT PROFESSIONAL BLOGGERS.

These are not people who blog for a living. They have small businesses and blog to support and market that business. People like you!

Many of you have a small business and a website. Maybe you’ve written a couple of blog posts, but have mostly ignored the blog. Some of you still have that “Hello World” post as your lonely blog post. How sad.

Would you like a little encouragement and support to get that blog working for your small business? I can’t guarantee a big contract or writing gig, but I can guarantee you have no chance of one if you don’t give it a try.

I’m inviting you to join our next blog challenge!

This one will take place in February. It will only require 20 posts in 28 days – we’re giving you weekends off. Show your business some love this month and join us. It’s a great way to kick start the blogging habit and increase the content on your website.

The challenge won’t cost you a dime. Dawn Barclay and I are coordinating and coaching you through the month. We have a private Facebook group setup where you can ask for help and make suggestions to your fellow challenge takers (is that a word?). The group will even help you promote your blog posts. And it’s all FREE.

2013 is the year content marketing becomes king. Get busy with that blog and increase your website content.

Are you ready to do some serious marketing for your business? Are you ready to get and give some help to your colleagues? Sign up here.

How do you look to Twitter?

January 18, 2013 by Kelli

Every now and then, I run an application called TwitCleaner to thin out the number of people I am following on Twitter. This is a rather vain attempt at reducing the volume of noise in my Twitter feed. It helps, but not that much.

Twit Cleaner looks at everyone I am following on Twitter and analyzes what kind of user they are based on what they Tweet. Then it makes recommendations of who I should unfollow.

My favorite par of the analysis comes at the end when I can ask it to analyze my Tweets and let me see how I look. So far, it’s been nothing but compliments and “atta boys”.

What I find really interesting is how some some people appear to Twit Cleaner. Famous people. People who should know better. And, sad to say, some of you.

How Twit Cleaner sees the Twitter crowd

People are lumped into categories based on less than desirable behavior. Not icky behavior. Just not friendly or useful.

Potentially Dodgy Behavior – Nothing but links

No replies. No retweets. No engagement with the community. Just a constant stream of “Look at what I wrote.” A couple of these are the Twitter feeds for magazines, so I expect them to be nothing but links. But when it is an individual or, worse, a social media ‘expert’ who’s been flagged like this? Yep, unfollowed.

Repeating the same URLS – Duplicating the same link more than 25% of the time

It’s like deja vu all over again.

Posting Identical Tweets – posts the same tweet too many times

We heard you the first 20 times.

App Spam – more than 50% application spam from paper.li, foursquare, IFTT, etc

Surprising that IFTT, which is being pushed right now as a productivity improver is in the list of app spam. IFTT is short for “If this, then that”. In case you were wondering.

BOTS – more than 90% pumped out from an RSS feed.

Letting your RSS feed do all the work is probably not a winning strategy.

And there are more, but those are the biggies.

You shouldn’t be automating all of your Tweets

Most of the people that TwitCleaner flagged are probably using Hootsuite, RSS, and IFTT to automate all of their tweets. Those are incredibly useful tools and I encourage you to get to know Hootsuite, if nothing else, but when your Twitter feed is nothing but pre-written tweets you’ve scheduled ages in advance, there’s not a lot of value for your followers. You’ve just moved your interruption marketing to Twitter. And that’s the wrong outlet for interruption marketing.

You should engage with your followers

The other big flag were people who either don’t follow back, only retweet, or only post links. Twitter is a big water cooler environment. You need to talk to people. Otherwise you’re nothing more than the bulletin board at the water cooler. No one will pay you any attention.

I’m not a Twitter power user, by any means, but I do try to strike a balance between announcements, retweets, and conversation.

Give TwitCleaner a try and make sure you look at how the service sees you. Are you on any of their lists?

Getting past the fear of exposure

January 8, 2013 by Kelli

Three facts:

Content Marketing is king, so we need a lot of content
We (both you and I) shouldn’t be hiding behind the editorial We.
Most people fear speaking in public more than they fear dying (or the zombie apocalypse – same thing).

Sometimes these three facts collide and the result is chaos and despair. Graphic Novel level chaos. Wailing and gnashing of teeth despair. Oh woe is thee!

So what do these three things have in common and how could they possibly collide?

You have to tell people your story.

fear-of-making-mistake And that scares the crap out of a lot of people. In fact, it scares almost everyone! Telling people your story involves opening up to complete strangers. It exposes you to the fact that, well, some people just won’t like what you have to say or how you say it.

One of the biggest reasons I hear from small business owners who don’t have a blog is: they’re afraid to. They’re afraid of making a mistake, of being ridiculed, or of being vulnerable. Those are all legitimate fears. But that’s all they are – fear!

The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself – Franklin D Roosevelt

That and being eaten by zombies. Really, I don’t understand the recent fixation on zombies – they’re gross. Most of our fears are imaginary; we (I) obsess over scenarios that might happen and horrendous results that might occur. In reality, it just ends up being a typical, boring trip to the grocery store to pick up carrots and onions.

Our fears may not real, but they are not fictional

“So the boggart sitting in the darkness within has not yet assumed a form. He does not yet know what will frighten the person on the other side of the door. Nobody knows what a boggart looks like when he is alone, but when I let him out, he will immediately become whatever each of us most fears.” – Harry Potter & the the Prisoner of Azkaban

It might have been easy for poor Neville Longbottom to conquer the boggart using the Ridikulus spell, thus dressing Professor Snape in women’s clothes, but here in the real world, it takes more than waving a wand to conquer your fears. Lucky for us, there are a few things that work.

The one sure fire way to get over your fear of blogging.

Blog

I know, it sounds crazy, but it works!

Much like public speaking, fear of blogging is fear of being exposed. And the fastest, bestest way to conquer that fear is by doing. Repeatedly.

I used to be terrified of speaking in public. But I’m not anymore. In fact, I really enjoy it – it’s a wonderful way to educate a big group of people and a way to meet some truly lovely people. How did I get comfortable with speaking?

Your audience is thinking about themselves

When I was in marketing, I had to give presentations several times a week. Sometimes in front of some very powerful people. Talk about intimidation! Those first few (ok, DOZEN) presentations I gave were sweaty palm, shaky voice, knocking knees affairs. But I kept at it. Getting paid to do it didn’t hurt.

After a while, I realized that no one noticed if I stumbled across a word or threw in a few ‘UMs’. They weren’t there to critique my speaking ability. They were there to find out if my product solved their problem. Once I realized that they were concentrating on meeting their needs and not on my speaking ability, getting up in front of an audience got pretty easy.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a little exercise I want you to do right now:

Think back on your favorite high school teacher or college professor. Think about what made their lectures so enjoyable. Do you remember any of the goofs they made? Well, maybe that one time when the chemistry professor got things mixed up and set off the fire alarms, but those guys do that for sport?

I’ll bet you never noticed how bad they were some days. You only noticed how good they were; how much fun it was going to that class. Most of them didn’t start out that good. They spent a lot of their first year with sweaty palms and shaking hands before they got comfortable in front of a class. Then they got better.

You can overcome your fear of blogging

Write that first post. Publish it. Don’t spend days perfecting it. Publish it. You won’t have a huge audience at first, so you’ll be safe from ridicule. Now publish another one. And another one. Keep going.

It won’t be perfect. In fact, it shouldn’t be perfect. It may not even be good. But it will be published and you’ll be a blogger.

Your audience will grow as you write more blog posts. As you write more blog posts, you’ll get better. The audience you attract will be the people who like what you write and how you say it. They will LIKE YOU! How is that for kicking fear in the head?

Need some more support? Need some basics on blogging? Check out the free 10 Part Tutorial that Dawn Barclay and I put together on Business Blogging School, it’s called How to Knock Blogging Fears on The Head. We wrote this just for you. We want to help you get over that fear of being exposed.

Have you put off adding a blog to your site because you are afraid of blogging? Is there something we missed in our tutorial? I’d love to hear about it, so please do leave a comment.

2013 – The Year of Content Marketing

January 2, 2013 by Kelli

All of the experts* have weighed in and the verdict is:

2013 is the year of content marketing!

Huzza! Break out the disco ball, it’s time to party!

I know you’re asking yourself

What is content marketing?

Content marketing isn’t sales. It isn’t advertising. It isn’t high pressure, icky, sleazy, or any other negative word you can think of. Marketing is promoting a product or service. Marketing is explaining how your product or service solves a problem, fills a need, or scratches an itch.

If you do it right, the people who have that problem won’t need much selling to.

Back when I was in marketing at AT&T, I designed product brochures, worked with ad agencies, and taught sales people about the product. We designed a few pieces of marketing materials and handed them off to the sales force who did classic selling.

Content marketing isn’t like that.

Content marketing is educating your customers. Filling in the gaps in their knowledge. Talking to them and answering their questions.

This blog post? Yep, it’s content marketing. I’m helping to educate you on the value of having a website and blogging. You’ll read it and think to yourself, “Wow, I have got to get a great website. Now, who could help me with that?”

And then it hits you:

I’ll bet Pint Sized Sites could help me with my website.

How’s that for transparent marketing!

Content marketing is all of the stuff you put on your website. That’s a lot of stuff: the home page, about page, products page, contact us page, FAQ page.

Too many businesses see this as a burden to be gotten done as quickly as possible and then left alone. Then they wonder why their websites don’t make them any money.

Look at all of the pages on your website as opportunities to market your services

That’s a lot of opportunities to talk to your customers about how you can help them.

So, why is Content Marketing so important?

In the past, you could play some games, like keyword stuffing and buying inbound links, to get the search engines to send people to your website. That doesn’t work any more. First, the search engines have figured it out and quit rewarding people for the games and, second, web visitors have figured out what a crappy website looks like and will quickly leave if there is no value for them there.

That’s where content comes in. If you write something that people value, they’ll stick around and look at your other pages. They’ll share it with their friends on Facebook and Twitter.

That generates word of mouth. That’s what the search engines look for to help you rank better.

Want to turbo charge your content marketing?

Add a blog. Post on a regular basis. Post by post you will increase the amount of valuable content on your website. You’ll be able to address questions as they come up. You’ll be able to discuss news items and new research immediately. You’ll be able to talk directly to small groups of customers.

How are you going to get into content marketing this year? Are you looking at updating your website content? Are you looking to add a blog or increase your blogging frequency? Let me hear your plans in the comment section below.

Shameless marketing follows.

Need more help?

Check out the free 10 Part Tutorial that Dawn Barclay and I put together on Business Blogging School, it’s called How to Knock Blogging Fears on The Head. However you can easily apply the lessons to all areas of your business website not just your blog, because the fears are universal!

* People who make their living in online marketing

I or We?

December 27, 2012 by Kelli

You’re a solo business trying to sound legit. Do you use “I” or “We” in your website and blog text?

When I opened my first business, the massage practice, it was a mix. I had originally thought there would be more therapists coming on board, so I hedged my bets. When I wrote the initial text for this website, there was an awful lot of “we” scattered around.

Using “We” when there is only an “I” is a mistake.

It’s not authentic, it’s not true, and it makes us look stuffy and pretentious. Not the best way to get a business relationship off the ground.

As I’ve updated and tidied up the site, I’ve been killing those “We” bugs where I find them. Oh, you might still find one hiding away somewhere. If you do, I’d appreciate a quick note telling me where it is so I can go squash it. But, by and large, it’s all about the “Me” around here.

Killing off my old corporate alter-ego, I call her “Corporate Kelli,” has been a struggle for me and I’ll bet it has been the same for you, too. We’re taught early on to sound “professional” and “inclusive” and “unoffensive” in our business lives.

We’re taught to write from the company’s view and that means “We”, like we’re a part of the Borg collective. You will be assimilated, resistance is futile. Right.

Don’t drag the blandness of your corporate past into your small business future

This is YOUR gig, baby. Those drones sitting in their look-alike cubicles, all wearing the same light blue shirt and khaki pants on casual Friday, wish they could break free and do their thing.

You did.

So why are you channeling your corporate voice? The people who want to do business with you want to do business with YOU, not Seven-of-Nine, so quit with the “We” crap already and wear that “I” like you were born to it. Because you were.

Using “I” is hard. It means putting yourself out there. Making yourself the target of criticism. Making yourself vulnerable. In reality, though, using “We” is like putting a towel over your head and pretending that no one can see you because you can’t see them. Of course they can.

Getting out from behind that verbal trick is scary. It takes practice. It can take some coaching. I’m lucky to have a couple of friends who have ~~pushed~~ nudged me and supported me as I step farther away from “Corporate Kelli”.

When you talk to your friends, do you sound like a corporate marketing department? No. You sound like you.
You are a real life, flesh and blood person that your customers are doing business with.

Want a good place to start? Go to your “About Me” page. If it’s written in the 3rd person, grab a hot beverage, sit down for 30 minutes and write it as if you were talking to your friends.

Already have a great “About Me” page? Then I want you to write a blog post. Write it as if you were writing a letter to a friend. You’re not a King or a President, and I’m betting you don’t have a tapeworm, so lose the Editorial “We”.