Sadly, it would much easier to write a post on what not to do, but I like to stay on the positive side here.

Whether your goal is to land a guest post, get a review of your product or just advance an idea you’ve got to put in the work to personalize your pitch and build relationships by demonstrating you’re a resource and not a pest.

Make non-spammy comments

One of the best ways to get on the radar of a blogger is to join their community by making relevant comments. Don’t drop in just to add a comment about your business or point to your recent blog post about some unrelated idea. Add to the conversation like someone who actually cares about the conversation and you’ll start to build a relationship based on trust.

Find regular features

Take some time to dig around in the archives of a blog and you’re likely to find some regular features just like you might in a magazine. Then, when it comes time to pitch your idea, you can suggest that it would be a good fit for a certain feature. This will always give your pitch more relevance and offer proof that you know a bit about the blog and that yours is not simply a bulk pitch.

I’ve run a Saturday post for several years now where I feature three services or apps that I call my weekly favs. Smart marketers have picked up on that and often pitch their product for a feature in that post. It’s a little thing, but it suggests a lot.

Look beyond the blog

If you buy that this is a relationship building game, then why not employ a few tools outside the blog to help. Build a Twitter list of your targeted bloggers and pay attention to what they tweet and what the retweet. Look at what they favorite on Twitter for some real meaty clues about what they like,

By monitoring what they do beyond their blog and in social networks you can often find angles that won’t be apparent on a simple media list.

Connect with guests and get referred

Many blogs run guest posts these days and one of the best ways to get your content on the list of potential guest posters is to study and connect with those that are already posting. In fact, you might go as far as to target these folks as suggested above and reach out to a few and ask for introductions.

A guest post on a highly read blog may be one of the most effective marketing tools you can employ so don’t just blast guest post requests, build a case for your post by becoming a part of the community and creating a network within.

Ask for an interview

Many bloggers, even well known bloggers, still work on building their awareness and will jump at almost any opportunity to spread the word about things they are working on. Many bloggers have business interests beyond their blog that need exposure. Many bloggers are also authors and have books to sell.

Consider interviewing some of your targeted bloggers for your own blog or podcast or connect them with other journalist or even customers of yours that might have a reason to want to interview them. An interview might consist of a twenty minute phone conversation or it might just be one well thought out question that you send via email, either way, this a great approach for building both content and relationships.

It warrants repeating, if a mention or link or review in your favorite blog is a worthwhile objective for your business, then put in the work required to get it done right.

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Modern Survey measures engagement by asking employees five questions (Gallup uses twelve) which look at the following:

1. Do employees take pride in their company?
2. What is an employee’s intent to stay with their company?
3. Is an employee inspired to put in extra effort to help their company succeed?
4. Would an employee recommend their company to others?
5. Does an employee see a promising future for themselves at their company?

Again, notice that Modern Survey doesn’t focus on activity metrics to define engagement.  They aren’t looking at comments on blogs, discussions, ideas submitted, or anything else of that nature.  They are focusing on the things that matter.

Eventually leaders at organizations are going to have to wake up and realize that they have a serious problem to deal with.  At the end of the day employees are the ones driving organizations to move forward and if you don’t have engaged and passionate employees at your company then you’re going to be moving at a snail’s pace and sometimes even backwards.  With the emergence of new collaboration tools and strategies today there is really no reason for why organizations can’t focus on building a more collaborative and engaged workplace.  I’ve always said that collaborative organizations can make the world a better place and I still believe that to be the case.

Until leaders of organizations realize how important collaboration and employee engagement are; we’re going to see these engagement numbers keep shrinking.  Now, post-recession, is a great opportunity for business leaders to transform and evolve their organizations and I’m hoping they do just that.

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This blog post is testament to this fact. It was inspired by the fact one of my clients websites was recently hacked.

Many people don’t stop and consider the impact of having your website hacked. It can be compromised in various ways including:

• Malicious software installed
• Content changed or corrupted
• Secret links added
• Data stolen

These consequences alone should be worrying to any website owner. But further to the obvious immediate issues, there are other repercussions to consider:

• Website suspension by hosting company
• Blocked or blacklisted by search engines
• Users experience being compromised

So having invested in designing and developing a beautiful new website, it makes sense to take some important steps to protect your investment, given its importance to your business.

So here’s the top 5 security wordpress plugins that every business website should be using:

1. Bulletproof Security

BulletProof Security protects your WordPress website against XSS, RFI, CRLF, CSRF, Base64, Code Injection and SQL Injection hacking attempts.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bulletproof-security/

2. Login Lockdown

Login LockDown records the IP address and timestamp of every failed login attempt. If more than a certain number of attempts are detected within a short period of time from the same IP range, then the login function is disabled for all requests from that range.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/login-lockdown/

3. Wordpress FileMonitor Plus

Monitors your WordPress installation for added/deleted/changed files. When a change is detected an email alert can be sent to a specified address.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-file-monitor-plus/

4. Antivirus for WordPress

AntiVirus for WordPress is a easy and safe tool to protect your blog install against exploits, malware and spam injections. Scan your templates now!

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/antivirus/

5. MyEasyBackup (backups are an important security measure)

Backup, restore, migrate your WordPress installation, both code and MySQL tables, with a single click.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/myeasybackup/

WordPress is great in terms of security as there are many other plugins that cover almost every conceivable security threat that exists.

So to start your new security measures…make sure you update wordpress version, your themes and your plugins. Then use these plugins to boost your protection.

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But, as with all roads, there is a direction you must travel to keep moving towards your destination even if, like the far off horizon, that destination keeps moving away no matter how quickly you move towards it.

In my own journey I can tell you there are three factors that have both led me and, at times, held me from advancing towards my picture of success.

Some of the most fruitful work I can do is centered on improving in these three areas.

1) Who I am

This a pretty big one and I won’t propose any prescriptions here, but I have found that when I commit to working on my core beliefs about what’s possible, what I’m driven to give to the world, how I want that world to experience my gifts, I have very little trouble taking action that’s in line with who I am.

The really beautiful thing about working on things like internal passion and purpose is that your progress comes out so authentically in all manner of external interaction. When people can genuinely feel that you care about what you are engaged in you are an incredibly convincing salesperson – without actually trying to sell anything.

This is an area that most everyone must practice. You must develop habits that force you be conscious of who you’re being. For me, writing my thoughts on paper each morning, spending time meditating and revisiting simple passages that serve to remind me of the version of my best self keep me focused on this practice.

I’ve also developed a series of questions that I can roll through before anything I do in an attempt to bring the right intention to every situation. Simply stopping and asking yourself why your are doing something, why it’s important and what a great outcome would look like is a great way to center yourself prior to making a large presentation to a group or meeting to discuss a new project with a staff member.

2) Where I’ve been

This doesn’t have anything to do with travel, although I suppose it could. For me this is all about leveraging what I’ve experienced, what I’ve learned, skills I’ve acquired, and what I intentionally expose myself to in an effort to learn more.

We’ve all been exposed to a life time of lessons, some serve us well and some hold us back, but it’s how you use this mixture and enhance this mixture and overcome elements of this mixture that defines success in many areas of business and life.

I didn’t do particularly well in school, but my brain is kind of wired to learn new things, dig into new subjects and explore topics seemingly unrelated to my field of work. I read some portion of about twenty books a month, subscribe to at least one hundred blogs and still get seven or either magazines delivered in my mail box.

Lifelong learning, exploring and simply tuning your brain to pay attention to everything that’s going on around you is another key factor in moving towards success.

3) Who I hang out with

There are many studies that offer validity to the notion that what you believe, how you act and even how much earning potential you have has a great deal to do with the people you surround yourself with.

Now, this can work for you or against you. Parents, school friends and social setting initially influence most people. As you venture into business you soon realize that customers, vendors, mentors and even competitors can play a big role in the success of your business.

When you’re first getting started you may attract customers that mirror your sense of self worth or doubt, but as you begin to grow you’ll soon learn that you must raise you own expectations to the level where you insist on working only with people you respect and admire.

I belong to two mastermind groups and I get to hang out for full days with people that have already achieved many things in business that I aspire to achieve. In addition to developing a network of people that can help me succeed in tangible ways this experience also opens me up to accepting that I can indeed think much bigger.

In order to move towards this ideal many people have chosen to immerse themselves in the study of people they admire through memoirs or even a mentor relationship. Pick three or four people that you view as successful, dead or alive, and learn everything you can about how they think act and grow.

Study and seek out a team of like minded strategic partners and focus a great deal of time and energy on building deep and meaningful working relationships with this group and you’ll quickly find that your own personal network will begin to fill up with people that can help you grow and thrive.

Find and join a mastermind group that pushes you to stretch and think bigger.

There are so many things we can get caught up in trying to accomplish, but experience tells me that if we go to work everyday on the internal, the external success we so crave will show up as mileposts along the road.

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This two-hour online workshop will introduce you to the benefits of Google Analytics. This online class uses GoToMeeting software.  You will be prompted to download a free guest copy prior to the class, if necessary. (Installation is quick and painless.)

Use Google Analytics to find out:

• Number of visitors
• Average time visitors spend on your site
• Types of traffic (direct, referral, search engine)
• Keywords used to find your site
• Most and least popular pages
• Geographic location of visitors
• Number of “socially engaged” visitors (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In)

Set Goals and Track Visitor Progress

• Measures conversions from visitors to customers (or donors, volunteers, etc.)
• Track visitor progress through your “funnel path” to a goal.
• Use data to improve site content and design.

Real-Time Data and Custom Reports

• Find out how many visitors are on your website now!
• Reveal the key words they used to get there.
• Show the pages currently being viewed and locations of current visitors.
• Customize reports for focused data analysis.

Regitser Online, by Phone or E-Mail

• Cost: $99.
• Go to their website: http://www.ptraining.com.com.  Click Register Now! on the home page.
• Call their office: (413) 387-1040
• Send them an email:  info@ptraining.com
• PPrivate classes using your website or blog data also available.

Private SEO website analysis also available

• Learn how to optimize your website for search engines.
• Improve your SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) rankings.
• Avoid SEO mistakes and make maximum use of web page copy, titles and ALT tags.
• Design Google Analytics goal funnels to track visitor progress through your site.
• Create custom GA reports to retrieve the exact information you need

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For those who organize and facilitate events, you have a few challenges:

* You need speakers who will draw–after all, it’s about butts in the seats, right?

* You need speakers that are engaging, funny and smart–not just people who know the subject matter.

* And, most times, you need speakers that don’t come with $10,000-plus price tags (the market that has become the social media speaker circuit).

OK, so if that’s the backdrop, how do you go about finding a qualified social media speaker for your next event? I propose asking yourself the following four questions–and taking the subsequent four actions–before you make a decision:

Question: Does the speaker have real work experience in the field, or is the speaker merely a “theorist?”

Nothing wrong with theorists–we need them and appreciate them for their vision and ideas. But, the fact remains, they’re not in the trenches each day. Look for folks with actual experience in the field. But, don’t limit yourself to just brand folks–agency people have a lot to offer. Remember, they’re the ones who get paid to come up with the big ideas. And, with social, they’re frequently on the “front lines”, too (read: community management, influencer outreach, etc.).

Action: Check the speaker’s client roster.

See what kinds of brands they’ve worked with. Look at their LinkedIn profile–see what companies they’re worked for. See who they’ve worked with and what kind of results they’ve achieved. And, check out the social properties of the brands they represent–that will tell you a lot about their work.

Question: What other events have they spoken at in the past?

If you’re organizing a bigger, national event, does the speaker have experience with other national conferences? Or, have they only spoken on the local circuit? If you’re going to put someone on a bigger stage with 500-5,000 people in attendance, you better be sure they have experience doing that. Otherwise, you’re taking a pretty big risk (one that can be worth it, but still, a risk). On the flip side, if you’re looking for a local speaker, has the person spoken everywhere around town? That can cut both ways–the speaker may be a bit over-exposed. At the same time, that’s probably a pretty good indicator that the speaker is pretty darn good and you might want to take a long, hard look at that person.

Action: Look for a list of prior events they’ve spoken at.

If the speaker has a blog, they usually list these events somewhere on the site. If not, again, LinkedIn may contain this information. And, if that doesn’t work, just send the speaker an email and ask them directly.

Question: How is the speaker as a “performer?”

Yes, content matters. Your speaker needs to know her stuff. But let’s face it. The great speakers are remembered because they’re “performers”–not just speakers. For me, I tend to think of folks like Peter Shankman here. Love him or hate him, the guy can present. He has a stage presence. He’s funny. He’s “engaging.” People respond to him when he’s on stage. Locally, I think Jennifer Kane is one of the better speakers we have in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market. I’ve seen her present a number of times and she blows me away every time. Look for that “it” quality–no matter what size your event.

Action: Browse YouTube for clips or previous engagements.

Or, see what they’re like on stage for yourself. Find out where they’re speaking next and either go see them first-hand, or ask a friend or colleague who’s going (or, just watch on Twitter and see the crowd’s reaction). Check out their site/blog–sometimes they’ll have clips there, too.

Question: Do they recycle content?

Some social media speakers have developed a reputation for “recycling” presentations. Sometimes that can work–after all, we’ve all re-used a presentation from time to time. It’s called (warning: corporate-speak coming) “leveraging your resources.” But, if you continue to use the same presentation time and time again, word gets out. Look for speakers that generate custom content and presentations for each set. Those are the folks that will do the research to provide content tailor-made to your audience.

Action: Ask industry folks for tips/advice.

Better yet, ask other conference organizers that have booked the speaker before for their two cents. See which speakers are known for custom content–and which tend to re-use versions of the same presentation. You’ll get the answers you need fairly quickly.

Have you organized a digital/social media event before? What criteria did you consider when making speaker selections?

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I doubt the reason that your business isn’t landing leads is because Google, your competitors, your SEO and your link builder conspired against your success.

It’s more likely your content. Bad content will not drive leads or sales. You can market the hell out of your site – have all your SEO sorted including link building, be advertising in Google and getting plenty of traffic, but all that won’t help if you’re website content just isn’t enticing to the visitor.

Heather Lloyd-Martin from Success Works has outlined 4 main issues that arise from bad website content and how you can fix them.

• Bad content issue #1: Your site is so focused on SEO that you ignore the customer experience. Have you spent thousands on link building, social media management and technical SEO – but you made your admin assistant write the copy and told her to stuff it with keyphrases? If so, what are you thinking? As my father used to say, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Your link builder and SEO may be able to drive more traffic to your site, but know that “driving traffic” doesn’t mean “you’ll make sales.” If your content sucks, there’s no reason to promote it. Fix it instead.
• Bad content issue #2: Your site is so filled with marketing-speak that it turns off your readers. Have you ever chatted with someone who liked to flaunt their “intellectual superiority?” Boring aren’t they? Yeah – well, your dirt-dull SEO content has the same effect on folks. If you’re pushing your “consultative” angle, speaking over the heads of most readers will do nothing but turn them off and cause them to feel like they can’t “connect” with you. When you write approachable copy, people will approach you. It’s that simple. (And yes, I’m talking to you, B2B companies.)
• Bad content issue #3: Your site is all about you – and not about your reader. Here’s a newsflash – your prospects really don’t care about your mission statement. Or your warehouse. Or your process – unless you can show how that process helps your customers. Think about it: do you recite your mission statement every time you chat with a new prospect? Of course not. Why would you write content that does exactly that?
• Bad content issue #4: You don’t have much site copy because you want people to call you instead. Yes, it’s important to chat with prospects. At the same time, people won’t call you unless you give them a reason – and that reason means smart, customer-driven content. You don’t need to give away the secret sauce of what you do. But, don’t you want enough copy to explain what you do and why people should give you a call?

So, if you find that your site content isn’t that great, it might be time to take half a day to site down and tackle the problem head on by writing content that is actually going to encourage visitors to take action. Good luck!

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Without the right tools, it can be a nightmare trying to keep tabs on who’s saying what and where they’re saying it.

And if you can’t see what they’re saying and where they’re saying it, how are you supposed to engage in the conversation which is one of the keys to social media marketing.

So to make your life easier, I’ve highlighted 5 tools below that you should be using in 2012 to monitor your businesses social media presence (or your personal social media presence).

1. Social Mention – A site that offers real-time social media search and analysis. It’s very easy to use and features the most common indicators of social media activity (strength, sentiment, passion and reach).
2. Google alerts – Google alerts allows you to set up search queries for keywords and then will  email/RSS feed you whenever it finds those keywords. Start with keywords that include your company name, products, and your URL.
3. Search.twitter.com – Here you can search for keywords or phrases and view those mentions (up to two weeks) as they occur on Twitter. Once you find relevant keywords you can subscribe via RSS feed.
4. Addict-o-matic – this site creates a custom web page which aggregates the latest buzz on your company or products from a variety of sources including major search engines, YouTube, Flickr etc.
5. BoardReader – this search service scours all the forum and bulletin boards on the web, delivering mentions and comments about your business. And yes, lots of people still use forums – so don’t ignore them.

There’s quite a few others out there, and many premium services that will offer clever analytics and graphical representation of your social media presence.

At the very least , these will cover 80% of whats being said about you and/or your brand online – and they’re free!

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Clicky

It offers real-time stats, with a simple, but functional interface. The dashboard is nicely laid out so you can see all of your important site’s stats on the front page. It’s also quite fast to navigate around, compared to some of the other services.

Clicky also supports visitor segmentation. So you can see how many of your US visitors searched for a particular keyword, and how their engagement stats (like Actions, Total Time spent on site) compare with other users. Free version available but features are limited.

Mint

Mint is a very stylish “less is more” kind of analysis software. Where many others pile on feature after feature, Mint strives to show you the most relevant data about your website in a simple “at a glance” kind of way. Priced per site, starting at $30 each.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel is another service that oofers real-time analytics, however it is their handling of conversion funnels that sets it apart from the crowd. Mixpanel offer both free and paid packages.

Reinvigorate

Reinvigorate’s main strength lies in its real time nature. Providing you have the desktop client plus javascript installed, you can watch visitors land on your site or blog in real time. This enables you to be alerted to goals when a visitor performs a site action. Heatmapping technology is also a plus. From $10 per month

FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics gives you the ability to track metrics that are specific to your business, in the form of events. Using their API you could for instance track software installs, newsletter views, media consumption or almost any event that you can get to trigger an API call. FoxMetrics offer both free and paid packages.

Kissmetrics

T

he difference with Kissmetrics and other analytics services is their attempt to make it personal by tracking and allowing you to easily visualise, the user life-cycle. Kissmetrics allows you to drill down to see the behaviour of individual visitors on your site and how that has changed over time. Packages start from $29/month

Chartbeat

Chartbeat’s dashboard gives you the pulse of your site, showing you what traffic you have, who is sending it to you, and where it is going. Chartbeat enables you to react to events as they happen: promote or improve a rising story to maximize time on site, participate in discussions about your site on the web, and raise prices in response to demand. 30 day free trials are available.

Woopra

Developed by former Google employees, it boast features such as data sharing via an API, and runs via a thin desktop client (across all platforms). To access your (live) web stats, you can either use their online application or you can download a desktop client. Apart from the very stylish looks, Woopre boasts some impressive segmentation features. It is currently still in Beta, and during this period signups will be getting the product for free.

Piwik

Piwik is advertised as an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. It’s completely free to use and fairly easy to install on your own server. The Piwik

Dashboard is nicely laid out, displaying various widgets that show things like the keywords visitors are using to come to your site, what entry pages they are coming in to and more. You can add whatever widgets you want, and use the drag and drop interface to lay out the widgets exactly how you like them.

StatCounter

StatCounter is one of the better-known free Google Analytics alternatives and it’s been around for a while. You don’t get the “oooh, shiny!” effect when you log into StatCounter, but the data is all there and you can get all the info on visits, visitor paths, popular pages, entrance- and exit-pages, incoming keywords etc. Packages range from $5 to $119 per month

So there you have it, 10 of the best alternatives to Google Analytics. If you have any other alternatives feel free to share and I will add them to the list.

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But how do you change your Twitter handle? Thankfully it is not like Facebook where once you have your personal URL you are stuck with it. Twitter allows you to change your name on a whim…though that is not recommended. Before you change your name, make sure you look closely at the risks and the reasons.

How to Change Your Twitter Name

Log in to your Twitter account

Click on the picture of your avatar in the top right hand corner of the screen

Click Settings, the first menu option

You will see the Username right underneath your name. This is where you will enter in your new username.

When you enter your new username it will let you know if the name is available or not.

Once you get a name that is available, just click save and your Twitter handle will be changed.

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