Guest Post on Art Camp for Women – Top 10 Reasons Every Artist Should Blog

January 16, 2012 By Beth Leave a Comment

I’ve got a fun new guest post up over at Art Camp for Women today! ACFW is a fabulous organization – you should absolutely check them out if you’re looking for incredibly fun camps in gorgeous Colorado. The owners of Art Camp for Women were one of my very first Blogging with Beth clients, and it’s been wonderful seeing them expand and grow their offerings and their wonderful website and blog.

The guest post is called The Top Ten Reasons Every Artist Should Blog.

Also, a HUGE congratulations to Lorri Flint and Lori Wostl, the co-owners of Art Camp for Women, for their mention in the February issue of Oprah magazine. They were included in a wonderful article in the magazine about self-expression. Congrats, ladies!

Filed Under: Blogs I Love, Star Students
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How to Link to a PDF in a WordPress Post

January 15, 2012 By Beth 4 Comments

Want to learn how to upload a PDF to your site and then link to it in a WordPress page or post? Here’s a little tutorial that explains how to do it.

This process is great for things like order forms, client intake questionnaires or contracts – anything you want your readers to be able to open and download directly from your website. And it works not only for PDF documents, but Excel, Word, audio files – you name it!

You can click on the little “full screen” button in the lower right corner of this player to get a larger version of this video (you can see all the little details that way!)

Filed Under: Video tutorials, Wordpress
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The Biggest, Scariest Leap of My Life

December 10, 2011 By Beth 28 Comments

Some time in the next six months, I’m taking a HUGE leap. I’m going to quit my day job.

Many of my clients and followers don’t know this, but for the past four years I’ve been holding down a part-time  office job as an administrative assistant. I keep it for the benefits, particularly the amazing insurance I receive for an incredibly affordable rate. I will also admit that as a parent, I appreciate having a steady paycheck every month, especially when the nightly news is filled with such constant gloom and doom about the lousy economy.

But my business has now reached the point where it can’t grow any further until I can give it my full attention. I want the business to be much bigger, and I can’t grow it until I can throw my heart and soul into it, with nothing holding me back.

I’ve been saying for years that I’d like to make the leap, but I always have a ready excuse why I can’t let the job go – the bad economy, not enough cash in the bank, insurance woes, blah blah blah. Weeks turned into months and months turns into years, and still I punched the clock at the day job and wished for things to be different.

The idea of quitting my day job is terrifying. But something has shifted in me recently, and this time I know I’m going to act in spite of the fear – I’m going to quit the job anyway.

Want to know what my kick in the pants was? It was Betsy and Warren Talbot, the great minds behind the magical blog Married with Luggage. I recently finished their fabulous e-book “Dream Save Do: A No-Nonsense, Step-by-Step Blueprint for Amassing the Cash You Need to Live Your Dream.” In the book, Betsy and Warren spell out exactly how they socked away enough money to quit their corporate gigs, sell all their possessions, and go on an extended trip around the world. The book is not only practical but inspiring.

One of the coolest tips in the Talbots’ book is the idea of creating what they call “Dream Porn,” a large visual reminder of your dream. They advise you to put your Dream Porn in a really prominent place in your house, so you see it every day.

The day after I finished “Dream Save Do,” I created a giant collage of images that will move and inspire me to stick with my budget and keep doing everything in my power to live my dream. You can see my collage below – it’s hanging right above my kitchen table, and I get to eat my breakfast while I’m looking at it every morning. It moves me to take action so that I can make that huge leap.

Want to join the Live the Good Life Movement? Get $10 off “Dream Save Do” by entering the code “BETH” at checkout. Get the book. Create your Dream Porn. And get cracking.

Stay tuned here to find out more about my progress, and about some special offers I’ll be announcing between now and the end of the year in support of what I’m calling my “Free Bethy” project!

Thanks for your support!

(click on the image to get a larger version of the collage.)

Beth's Dream Collage

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How a Tomato Changed My Life

October 25, 2011 By Beth 18 Comments

For months, I had struggled with getting stuff done. I tried task lists, different systems for organizing my inbox, playing soothing music while I worked, and reading various books on productivity.

But the to-do list kept getting bigger and my desire to complete anything on the list kept getting smaller.

Then I discovered a little productivity tool that changed my life. It’s a little timer in the shape of a tomato.

I originally heard about working with the tomato timer by reading a post on the awesome travel blog Married with Luggage, written by Betsy and Warren Talbot. The post is called On Kitchen Timers, Writing, and Discipline. In her post, Betsy talks about how she started using a simple productivity solution called the Pomodoro Technique, and how this simple idea was helping her stay focused on her writing.

After doing a little reading on what this Pomodoro business was all about, I was curious to try it. Here are the basics:

1. Get yourself a kitchen timer. The man who originally coined the term “Pomodoro Technique” used a cool timer shaped like a tomato (thus the name – “Pomodoro” is the Italian word for tomato.) You can use any ordinary kitchen timer.

2. Pick one task on your to-do list. Best items to pick are the ones you’ve been putting off for a while.

3. Set the timer for 25 minutes.

4. Work on the task – and ONLY that task – until the timer goes off. If the phone rings, ignore it. If your cell phone dings with a new text message, don’t deviate from your work. Work until the timer goes off, no exceptions.

5. When the timer dings, take a short break (about 5 minutes) to do something else. Dance around the room, grab a drink, read a quick article.

6. After you complete four Pomodoros, take a longer break.

That’s it! The Pomodoro technique is a no-excuses way to plow through your to-do list and get a ton of work done. There’s something freeing about knowing that you only need to focus on the task at hand for 25 minutes. We can do anything for 25 minutes, right?

I’ve used this technique for:

  • Household chores
  • Writing blog posts
  • Processing my inbox
  • Internet research
  • Limiting (and maximizing) my social media time
  • Paying bills
  • Brainstorming of all kinds (guest blog post ideas, new products, presentations)

Apparently there’s a lot more to the technique if you really want to dive into it further. You can check out the Pomodoro technique website for more information. If you’d like to buy an adorable timer shaped like a tomato, you can get one from Amazon.

If you’re having trouble getting things done, and find yourself distracted by all the bells, whistles, ringing and alerts of our technological world, try a little tomato timer. It might just change your life.

Update: Don’t forget to check out the description of Betsy and Warren’s upcoming book, Dream.Save.Do! And thanks to Betsy for giving us a link to a cool online Pomodoro timer (see her comment below for link!)

This post is part of the October Word Carnival on productivity. Check it out for more great advice on being productive!

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/
Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Tools Tagged With:
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My Guest Post at Problogger!

October 8, 2011 By Beth 7 Comments

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that my first Problogger guest post, 7 Reasons No One Reads Your Blog (Except Maybe Your Mom) was published this morning.

Progblogger.net is one of the biggest blogs in my niche, so this is HUGE! I’m over the moon.

Want to show your support? Here’s what you can do:

1. Please comment on the post. Thoughtful commentary and exuberant enthusiasm are both welcome.

2. If you’re on Twitter, please retweet this post for me. Remember, you can follow me at @bethjhayden.

Thanks so much, everyone!

Beth

Filed Under: Blogs I Love, Guest Posting
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Why WordPress?

September 9, 2011 By Beth 15 Comments

Recently I needed to create a document for a client that she could take to her organization’s board of directors, to sell them on the idea of using WordPress. The board members had never heard of WordPress and weren’t sold on the idea of moving the organization’s outdated, HTML-based site over to a WordPress platform.

I got done with the document and sent it, but then it occurred to me that there may be other folks in need of a “Why WordPress?” document for their supervisors or boards. So I’ve decided to give it to you!

I’ve put the text of the document here, but if you’d like a printer-friendly PDF to print out and give to your boss (or any other WordPress skeptic you’re trying to convince) you can get that here:

Why WordPress? (PDF Format)

Here’s the text of the document.

Why WordPress?

Are you considering creating a website in WordPress, or moving your current HTML site to a WordPress platform? If so, you may be wondering – what the heck is WordPress? Why is everyone talking about it? What’s the big deal? This document was created to give you some of the benefits of WordPress, and explain why the whole world seems to have gone WordPress crazy!

WordPress is an open-source content management platform that was initially developed in 2003 as a blogging tool. WordPress has grown and expanded over the last eight years, and has become the world’s most popular content management system. It is used for blogging as well as for both personal and business websites.1,

Because WordPress is open source, the software itself is completely free. Anyone who wants to use WordPress needs to buy hosting for their site, usually at less than $100 per year.

Here are the advantages of using WordPress:

1. WordPress allows site owners to have complete control over the content of their sites WITHOUT having to know HTML. It is an easy-to-use application that allows you to publish pages and blog posts, edit previous pages, upload images, embed videos and keep your site updated – all without knowing a lick of HTML. If you can use Microsoft Word, you can learn to use WordPress!

2. The fact that your site can be managed without knowing HTML or PHP eliminates the need to pay a webmaster or web developer every time you want to make a change to your site or publish new content. This can result in HUGE long-term savings over the life of your site.

3. WordPress works beautifully with search engines. WordPress software is beautifully optimized for the search engines, which means that your web pages get found more quickly and come up in searches more often. And because it’s easy to publish new content, you’ll be much more likely to update your site on a regular basis, which is the BEST thing you can do to be found regularly by Google. Some of my clients have published content on their WordPress sites that is indexed and found by Google by the same afternoon.

4. The WordPress platform comes with an entire library of plugins, which are powerful tools that work in conjunction with WordPress. Some common plugins can do things like:

  • Help you better optimize your site for the keywords you want to be found for
  • Link your site with Google Analytics, so you can easily track traffic to your site
  • Add Twitter and Facebook “Like” buttons to your pages, so your readers can easily share your content on social media sites.
  • And more! There are currently over 15,000 plugins in the WordPress plugin directory.

5. The WordPress platform will allow your site to grow with you. WordPress is a fast, powerful publishing platform that allows your site to grow and expand as your organization does. You won’t need to switch platforms in two years because you’ve outgrown your web tool – WordPress will allow you to grow as fast and as big as you want, and it will be your partner in web publishing!

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Wordpress Tagged With:
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Google Analytics for Therapist and Coaches

August 2, 2011 By Beth Leave a Comment

Remember when I mentioned a few weeks back that Tamara Suttle and I have partnered up, and we’re currently teaching courses for therapists and coaches about marketing your businesses online? Well, we’ve got a new course now -  It’s called “Five Ways to Use Google Analytics (for FREE) to Track the Traffic to Your Website”. We’re going to go over everything you need to know to install Google Analytics on your site and then interpret the great data that the tool gathers for you.

Are you thinking, “I’d like to take that, but I’m not a therapist or coach?” Keep in mind that the term “coaches” can mean not only life coaches, but business coaches, tech coaches, writing coaches and other consultants who work one-on-one with clients to make their lives and businesses better.

Our class is set for August 16th at 6:00 PM Mountain, 7:00 PM Central, 8:00 PM Eastern.

Click here for details and registration/payment info.

Email me directly if you have any questions! I’m at beth@bloggingwithbeth.com

Filed Under: Classes and Workshops, Online Classes, Teleseminars Tagged With:
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Using Facebook for Business

July 28, 2011 By Beth 2 Comments

I’m halfway through HubSpot’s latest ebook, “How to Use Facebook for Business: An Introductory Guide” and I can’t put it down. HubSpot has a solid reputation for providing useful, current content on content marketing and social media through their webinars and guides, and this book is no exception. You can click here to download your copy of this incredibly useful Facebook e-book.

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Using Content to Build Your Business

June 23, 2011 By Beth 1 Comment

I’m a big fan of Duct Tape Marketing, a terrific marketing blog. John Jantsch, the Duct Tape blogger, also has two books that are fantastic if you’re looking for actionable marketing advice that REALLY works. This morning John’s got an article about how to look at content building in your business as a crucial strategy.

If you’re looking for content ideas, check out this cool diagram from the folks at Eloqua and JESS3 that John includes at the end of his post -  it gives you a ton of ideas for types of content to create! Pay special attention to the colored dots next to each item – they let you know what tools you can use to publish that content (your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)! This should keep you busy this summer!

(double click on this image to see detail)

The Content Grid

Filed Under: Content
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Free Webinar for Therapists and Coaches

June 22, 2011 By Beth 2 Comments

Therapists and Coaches – Learn how to develop an online marketing plan for your private practice in a powerful 60-minute FREE webinar with blogging and social media coach Beth Hayden and therapist Tamara Suttle, M.Ed., LPC. Our webinar is called How to Develop an Online Marketing Plan for Your Private Practice.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

  • How marketing is different than it was 15 years ago – and how your efforts as a therapist or coach have changed, too
  • Why you can no longer count on the Yellow Pages to get you clients
  • Why online marketing is important even if you get most of your clients from referrals
  • How to do an assessment of your current online marketing strategy to see what’s working and what’s not
  • How to put together a practical, do-able online marketing plan for the next 12 months

Webinar details:
Date: Wednesday, June 29th
Time: 6:00 PM Mountain
Duration: One hour

Sound good? Sign up here.

Can’t join us live? That’s okay! We’ll distribute a recording after the class. But you will need to be signed up to get the recording, so make sure to register here.

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