The Hello Bar is a simple web toolbar that engages users and communicates a call to action.

WELCOME TO NEW TRICKS

At New Tricks we are firm believers that “It’s never too late” . . . to

  • take a risk to start your own business.
  • transform an old tired website into a branded WordPress site you can maintain yourself.
  • learn new tricks with Social Media that can catapult your business into greatness.

I’m glad you stopped by. If you are new here, I’d love you to sign up for my awesome newsletter (in the sidebar to the right), to get one social media tip delivered to your inbox each Wednesday morning.

If you are into DIY, I have lots of great info. Look around, read some posts and be sure to say hello in the comments.

If you are ready to get to work on your online presence, take a look at my portfolio page and then contact me to see if we are the right fit for each other.

You can also schedule a Talk it out Session to get the information you need in order to take the next steps to growing your business.


MailChimp Offers “Tiny Letters” for Tiny Newsletters

I am very excited about the new product MailChimp acquired called, Tiny Letter. It is a very, very simple e-mail newsletter program that is much needed by most of my tiny clients. My team spends a lot of time teaching our small business clients how to set up the whole newsletter sign-up and templates in MailChimp so that they can send out a newsletter. MailChimp does offer tutorials, but there are so many options that my clients don’t even know which tutorial to watch.

Most of my small business clients don’t need anything fancy. They are never going to do fancy internet marketing and A/B testing of their content. But they do need to get a newsletter out to their clients/customers every so often with a great offer or an upcoming event. Love the Chimp, but MailChimp is pretty overwhelming for the very new blogger or small biz owner who is struggling just to get up to speed on their website and all that comes with that.

MailChimp is so smart. The Chimp knew this. Because they are free, people wanted to use them, but then some people were fussing that it was too much to learn and MailChimp didn’t have a stripped down version. They give away their Enterprise level program for free to people with lists less than 2,000. But what to do for the Mom and Pop shops? They bought Tiny Letter to give people for free!

A lot of people that should send out a newsletter, don’t. They might even have a sign-up form on their websites but [click to continue…]

Process Your Business Cards!

The tip today solves a terribly annoying problem, how to input the information from all those business cards into your contact on your phone/computer. Business cards are still the most practical way of exchanging contact information in real life and yet we want that information to be available at our finger tips from our phones and computers. After a networking event, most of us have a hard time making ourselves enter in all the data from the cards we collected, much less, follow up with people we have met.

There is now a fantastic and fun solution. CardMunch is a free iPhone app (Blackberry and Android versions to be coming soon) that will process your business cards in a matter of minutes. Just hold your phone over a card. When you see the card information come into focus, tap the screen and it will take a photo of the card and send it to be transcribed, right into your contact list. You will see the the image of the card photo as well as all of the relevant contact information in the appropriate fields in your contact list.

How does it get it right? Instead of using an optical scanning service, CardMunch uses a real humans to transcribe each business card and verify the accuracy of the transcription before returning them to your mobile phone as a contact. You can imagine that process sounds a bit spendy and in fact, Card Munch use to cost 2.99 for the app and 25 cents for each entered card, but a year ago, in a genius move, LinkedIn bought CardMunch and now offers it at no charge. This brilliant acquisition also allows us to have instant easy access to our contacts’ full LinkedIn profile information. And do you want some icing on that cake? With a tap of a button you can send the contact an e-mail or an invitation to connect via LinkedIn. How great is that?

Stop Protect-IP / SOPA From Compromising Our Internet!

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – http://www.fightforthefuture.org/pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

How to Pick a WordPress Theme: Oh My! So Many To Choose From!

Here are the slides from my presentation at WordPress Birmingham last weekend. I am also going to be doing it again at WordCamp Atlanta in a couple of weeks. I will also try and add the video after we get it processed.

Oh My! So many themes to choose from
View more presentations from New Tricks

How to Configure Your Facebook Privacy Settings

The other night I was at a party and some friends were complaining about some Facebook apps that post things on yours and your friend’s Facebook sites without your exact permission. It is enough to drive a person crazy. But not to worry. You can take care of it through your privacy settings so that you don’t annoy everyone.

Log-in to your Facebook account and go to your profile. There is a blue bar at the top of the page. Your profile photo and name is on the right hand side of the bar and to the left of that you will see the word home. Click “Home” to get a drop-down menu and select “Privacy Settings”.

One of the selections on the page is called “Apps and Websites” If you select the option to “Edit Settings” you can control what gets shared by your games and apps.

Find the option, “Apps You Use” and select “Edit Settings”. This will show all of the apps you have installed over your years of being on Facebook. [click to continue…]

Getting Started With WordPress Webinar Recording

Are you ready to get started with a WordPress Website but it still seems a bit daunting? In this webinar, I start at the beginning and talk about all the things you need to do to get a WordPress website started. We will go over the very basic elements, such as how to get a domain name for your site and how to choose a hosting account and exactly what you need to ask for. I will show you a simple WordPress install method and show you what settings you must know how to configure properly.

Whether you are going to create your own site or have someone help you, it is good to be informed. I work with people new to WordPress everyday. If you are a beginner, I know what you want to know and I am going to dish it up!

Be sure to sign up for my Just a Digital Minute which comes out every Wednesday with tips to grow your business with WordPress and Social Media! The signup form is in the sidebar to the right!

If you need a hosting account, I recommend Bluehost. If you click here to get it I do get compensated, but I swear I would do it for nothing! They are great to work with; answer their phones right away and answer all of my support questions.

Three Fast Years: Happy Birthday New Tricks!

Cake with a candle 3Time is a funny thing. The past year flew by so fast that I had to stop and think a minute before I could actually believe that New Tricks is now three years old this month.  What a lot has happened in such a short time.

I work with a lot of people who are making big changes in their lives and their businesses. Some are farther along than others. It is always easy to compare your insides with other people’s outsides and not realize what they went through to get where they are today.

I can remember being the couple of years before I started New Tricks. Real Estate development was at a standstill. I saw the writing on the wall and I didn’t want to build anything else I had to sell.( see some of my projects).  I was doing some fun renovations, but that was precarious given that it was the beginning of 2009 and the recession had just hit the fan. So there I was blogging and kind of trying out a lot of different ideas and wondering what exactly I was going to do next.

In my spare time, I did some websites for friends and spent a lot of time in my neighborhood coffee shop talking about websites, blogging and online business. People would over hear us talking and ask for my card. I didn’t have a business card or a business!

But this kept happening and I started to do some sites for people who weren’t friends and family and certainly had no idea at all I would have a web design company. I fell into this business by following my passion.

Lest that sound easy, I will tell you the truth. It was a bit daunting. I was afraid I couldn’t/wouldn’t be able to do it. That first year, I was up many nights until 3 AM, learning as much as I could about doing WordPress sites for other people. I think I was making about 3 dollars an hour, but that was okay. It was like school for me. They say if you do anything for 10,000 hours you will become an expert on it. I certainly put in at least that much time.

It boggles my mind about what can be achieved by putting one foot in front of the other and do it even if you don’t know how it is going to turn out. I did not have any idea that in three short years, I would have a thriving business supporting me and my team and be the co-organizer of one of the largest WordPress Meetup groups in the country, with over 900 members.

If there are things you love to do or have been thinking about doing, this is the time to go ahead and start now.  Although I always say,  “It’s never too late”, it is preferable to go ahead and get going – now.  I’m telling you, it doesn’t become any easier when your stand at the edge of something you care about and don’t go for it. Go ahead. Take the steps and see where they take you. You might be surprised.

Here’s to a great 2012!

All my love,

Judi

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