My niece Kendra, who lives in Maine, graduates from high school this weekend. Even though I can’t be with her, I’m still celebrating by offering 30% off Website and Blog Coaching Sessions through July 14th at www.ToolieCoaching.com.

You may be curious about what website and blog coaching accomplishes, so let tell you about one of my successful clients. She’s has had Internet Marketing training; she knows the general principles of how to attract clients, and is diligent in her outbound marketing. But is as the case with many of these Internet Marketing training programs, they leave out implementation instructions for maintaining the websites and blogs they want you to put in place.

When it comes to Internet Marketing, simply putting up a website or blog is not enough. It needs to be updated frequently with content to keep the search engines coming back. Even if you’re using blog software to create a website, you’re still going to bump into HTML and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) code when you want to change something: adding a new widget, installing a new feed, changing the appearance of the blog theme if you don’t like the colors.

My client realized that getting help with her websites and blogs was the smart thing to do. Over time she’s learned the HTML and CSS she needed to post new pages, add features to her website, and start an ezine with a template SHE created that matches her brand and colors. Yesterday’s victory? She added a new page to her website with links to past newsletters. By uploading the HTML ezine emails to her website as “side door” web pages, she’s building up the content, and regularly updating her website. The search engines LOVE her site.

It may seem like a small thing to be able to add pages to a website, but believe me it brings a huge sense of accomplishment. Over and over we’re told that we can get by without learning HTML… why? Because the people who tell us that have something to sell us that is several steps down the road from setting up a website. So we put up a pre-fab site we don’t understand to install a feature we can’t maintain. How do I know? Because those pre-fab site owners come to me to help them deal with the aftermath of those decisions.

The good news is that HTML and CSS are not difficult, they’re just detailed. It requires a little patience to get started, but once you get the hang of it, it’s enthralling, creative, even fun! Time and time again, my clients express relief, then satisfaction, then excitement, then joy over the fact that their most important online business asset is no longer a mystery to them. It becomes a tool they can use to increase their income, and bring help, joy, and satisfaction to THEIR clients.

Now what does all this have to do with my niece Kendra? She’s going off to college this fall, and a whole new world will open up to her. In addition to being 1,000 miles from home, there will be more competition, more challenges, more things to learn than ever. I want for her the same things I want for you: a good foundation for future success, and thankfully she’ll get it at that school. Now what about you?

Recognizing the value of learning certain essential skills for online success (like HTML and CSS) is my challenge to you. I’m offering you a free 30-minute initial consultation to help you sort out what needs to be done on your sites. Sign up for one now, and let’s get your websites and blogs back on track. Learn how to really manage your websites and blogs so that you can benefit YOUR clients.

http://www.toolie.com/links/initialconsultation

Toolie®

HTML Emails (e-zines, newsletters, email broadcasts) can be a great way to showcase your business, especially for markets that care about a professional appearance in every aspect of the business. However, having an email template that doesn’t LOOK like YOUR business can be a drawback! With a little HTML and CSS knowledge, you can create an email template that delivers not only your message but also enhances your brand recognition.

Unlike creating an HTML page, you can’t rely on a Cascading Style Sheet to control the appearance of your HTML emails, so you have to do a little planning and embed CSS instructions in the HTML tags. It’s not at all hard to do, you just need to pay attention to details, as always.

On Thursday night February 25th at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern time, we’ll look at exactly how you “Brand Your Emails with Custom Templates.” I’ll take you behind the scenes of those pre-fab email templates and show you how you can attach YOUR colors and images so your customer list recognizes YOUR message among all their emails.

If you’ve never attended one of my webinars, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the practical, hands-on, how-to nature of my demonstrations. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll feel empowered to handle tasks like this yourself.

I will also go over the details of my “I Can Fix My Website” training product, coaching program, and membership website during the webinar. 

Sign up for the webinar by clicking the button in the box on the right, even if you’re not sure you can attend. Don’t worry, this webinar WILL be recorded, so you can view it later, but I need your signup so I can send you the link to the recording.

I’ll see you on February 25th at 6 pm Pacific, 9 pm Eastern time!

When I describe what I do to folks who are not business owners or who don’t operate on the Internet, they’re baffled. “There are plenty of free website templates out there: do you have customers for what you do?”

Yes, absolutely. If you’ve spent any time on the Internet trying to attract customers, you quickly discover that simply putting a website up is not enough. You can set up a website or a blog and have it live in relative obscurity for months, even years. I know this from personal experience…!

“You don’t need to learn HTML to have a website.” That’s true as long as you don’t have a preference as to whether the website is blue or brown or purple. Perhaps you don’t mind that your website looks like the 762 other websites using the same template. However, when you begin to develop a brand for your business and you want your sites to reflect your brand, your colors, your logo, you will start to care very much.

“Have your web designer add this, (and this, and this) to your site.” Why do the experts say use this phrase? Because the assumption is that you as website or blog owner are not willing to learn HTML or Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) skills necessary to make the changes yourself. Perhaps not at first; but as time passes and your sites sit in cyber-obscurity, your priorities change. You can certainly choose to depend on your web designer to make updates, but why not learn how to do the simple things? It makes fiscal sense, and your site updates will certainly move along a lot faster. And on the Internet, fast updates are the name of the game.

When it comes to marketing over the Internet, you need more than just a website or a blog. You’re going to want to create squeeze/opt-in pages, confirmation and thank-you pages, custom HTML for the top and bottom of your shopping cart pages, and of course, pages where you post downloads or giveaways. You can certainly copy and paste from existing pages, but are you confident that you know what to add and what to remove without breaking the template?

There are plenty of things you can do to attract traffic to your site. And what do they usually involve? More often than not, it’s jumping into the HTML or CSS to make changes. The good news is that HTML and CSS are a lot simpler than you think. They’re detailed, but they are not difficult. And that’s where my business is: showing entrepreneurs, virtual assistants, and small business owners a simple method for learning the HTML and CSS they need to feel confident and be competent to work on their own sites.

I’ll have more to say on this subject in the weeks to come. Stay tuned for more of my gentle truth-telling…

Meanwhile, be sure to sign up for Thursday night’s Free Website and Blog Makeover Webinar.

Social Media has everyone’s attention these days — Facebook, Twitter, Social Bookmarking, and so on. There’s no doubt that you can benefit from participating in social media. You can even put icons, badges, and feeds on your websites and blogs to encourage your visitors to engage with you. Did you notice the new icon in the left column? That’s a Twitter badge.

On Tuesday night, November 17th at 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific, I’m having a f~r~e~e webinar on HOW to install social media on your websites and blogs: how to decide what’s appropriate, where to put the information, and exactly how to install it.

Putting social media icons and feeds on your websites and blogs is not difficult, it just requires some attention to detail, and I can help you with that. I’ll explain the HTML that Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed are so eager to have you install, and we’ll make it happen right there, live!

I’ll also be previewing my new website training course that evening, so be sure not to miss this webinar.

Save the date: November 17th, 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific, and click the button on the right to sign up! This webinar WILL be recorded and available to everyone who signs up for the webinar.

Toolie®