Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Set Up a WordPress Site in Minutes

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Get your WordPress site set up at http://MyFavoriteWebHost.com/ (That is my affiliate link for the web hosting service I recommend. Try it, you’ll like it!)

Anyone who has a business or wants to be seen as a leader in their field needs to have an online presence. And, no, that does not mean a Facebook profile. Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, LinkedIn and other sites can be useful, but you need to have a site that you own and control. Popular sites come and go. (Remember MySpace? Anyone? Bueller?) And if you do not own the site you are on, you can be thrown off the site at any time. It has happened on Facebook, Blogger, Squidoo and many other platforms: someone built a business there and one day it was gone.
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Blog Post Idea Generators

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idea-generatorsAnyone who has been blogging for a while knows that it can be difficult to come up with interesting, new ideas for posts on a regular basis. Sometimes the ideas flow and other times…not so much.

What can you do when the ideas just don’t come? A lot of people liked the video I did about using the Portent Content Idea Generator, so I decided to share a bunch of other headline and title generators you can use to come up with titles for articles and blog posts.

All of these are free. None require registration or make you jump through any hoops. Just follow any of the links below, enter your topic or keyword and click.
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Add A YouTube Video To Your Blog

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youtubeLooking for a blog post idea? Posts do not have to be only the written word. A video can make a great post and–here’s the really cool part–it doesn’t even have to be a video you created. Whether you’ve found a video on YouTube that you just have to share with the world or you have created a video and uploaded it to YouTube, adding it to your blog is as easy as click, copy, click, paste, done.

Why Embed YouTube Videos in Your Posts?

You might want to add a video by you or someone else showing how to do something you are explaining in a post. Or you simply might want to share something interesting and useful you found. Although a video can stand on its own, it is a good idea to add some text saying why you are sharing that particular video, describing what it is about, or offering other comments about the content. If it is your video, you might even want to put a transcript of the video on the page. (Lots of people like video, but there are others who prefer text. And the search engines can index the text on the page.)

If you are comfortable creating videos, this can be an easy way to come up with a post. Create a short video, upload it to YouTube and embed it on your site. Even if you have never made a video in your life, though, you can use videos created by others. Most videos on YouTube have simple code that allows you to embed the video. That means that you can legally and ethically copy and paste the video into your site.

How to Embed a YouTube Video

I am going to share the specifics of adding a YouTube video to a WordPress post, but the basic technique will work with many other video sharing sites and other blogging platforms or HTML sites.

Ready? [Read more…]

Rejecting a Guest Post

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reject-a-guest-postAccepting guest posts at your blog is a great way to build your readership, create relationships with other bloggers, give your readers access to another perspective and give yourself the occasional day off from writing. There are many bloggers who are willing to provide quality content for your blog in exchange for the exposure and links they receive from a guest post.

But what happens when you request a guest post and you can’t use what is submitted? It may be that it is badly written, or it may be a good post but not right for your blog. Here are some ideas on how to handle the situation:
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Keep Your Blog Running Smoothly

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Image by Wikiuser100000 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
By Wikiuser100000 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Your car will run for a while if you don’t change the oil, never get a tune-up and ignore a glowing “check engine” light. But if you go too long without performing at least basic maintenance, your car will eventually stop performing and let you down. The same goes for your blog.

Much like a car, a blog is a complex system. To maintain it, you need to keep the software up to date, regularly add content, interact with your readers and more.

Here are some of the most important things you need to do to keep your blog running smoothly. [Read more…]