Decisions: The Road Not Taken

In college at the University of Arizona, I took a Graphic Design course by a really great professor. One of our assignments was to take a poem or song and integrate it into a story book. The words were the lyrics and we were to add images that they text lay on in a artsy way.

I chose the poem by Robert Frost written in 1915 titled “The Road Not Taken”. I bring this up because I was recently digging through old boxes and found this storybook that I designed 7 years earlier. I flippedfork-in-the-road through the pages, about 12, and remembered what that poem meant to me at the time…

When I entered college I was just snapping out of my “darker” teenage years. Man, those were tough. And as you know, I even wrote a book about that time for me called Rescuing Me: A Teen’s Journey From Lost to Found. During those years, many times, I felt as if I was standing at a place in the woods with a fork in the road just ahead.

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Windows Keyboard Shortcuts to Save Time

There are many little tricks I use all day long that helps me to work more quickly and efficiently. I promise that once you learn and practice these few little commands, you’ll love them too!

So let’s start out with the basics.

Let’s say you want to bold some text. Instead of highlighting the text, scrolling up to the toolbar in whatever program you are working in, locating the b button for bold and clicking it … simply highlight the text and hit ctrl + B on your keyboard.

  • Italics: highlight text, then ctrl + I
  • Underline Text: highlight text, then ctrl + U
  • Undo you last entry: ctrl + Z (I use this about a hundred times a day)
  • Redo your last entry: ctrl + Y
  • Save: ctrl + s (I use this ALL the time when writing to make sure my latest version is saved!)
  • Copy text: highlight text, then ctrl + C
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Get Your Business Thriving in a Rough Economy with ‘Tough Teams’

Leaders in companies across the nation are brainstorming on ways to increase sales, productivity and efficiency. This economic downturn has entrepreneurs scrambling to unify their team and lead them toward a common goal of growth and success. But sometimes among these teams, conflict will arise…

“Tension and conflict are neither good nor bad, they are part of living. For a team to get work done, there must be human interaction. Interaction often leads to conflict. This is especially true when the work is challenging and the risks are great.” – Bill Kuehn, Owner of Tough Teams

There are many investments to consider during this time. Should you revamp your website to gain more visitor attraction? Should you increase your marketing efforts to increase interest? Well, what about your core foundation – your team. Without a well-oiled machine that is working WITH you, how can you expect your marketing and branding efforts to make any difference?

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A Must See Video!




www.HumanityHealing.net


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HTML Code – Not the Scariest Thing to Learn

If you’re anything like me, I tried to avoid learning HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code because I thought it was a bunch of complicated numbers and letters. I was overwhelmed just looking at code, let alone having to turn it into my job day in and day out. But hey, I started at the beginning and before I knew it, it became easier and easier. You CAN do this!

So let’s start off with a few basics…

You will see these tags (or commands) before and after a block of text. These tags tell the text what to do and how to look. These commands are always surrounded by brackets < >. To tell the text to stop doing a certain command you will put a forward slash at the beginning of the final bracket such as </__ >

For example,

  • <b>Today</b> will bold the text Today.
  • <em>Today</em> will emphasize (italics) the text Today.
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A Single Serve Coffee Success

So something you should know about me, I am a HUGE coffee fan. I wasn’t always, actually. I can remember my dad and sister going out for coffee and me wondering why on Earth they liked the taste. But, somewhere around 7 years ago everything changed. Now, I can’t skip a single day without drinking my latte.

But check this out, there’s a company out there that can be found at www.SingleBrew.com that made me look at coffee in a totally new way – but a good way!

Have you ever heard of Single Serve Coffee? I sure hadn’t. I always thought Starbucks was the best way to go when you wanted a single cup of coffee. But my bank account hated that option – $1,300+ per year for crying out loud! Well, it turns out that “single serve” coffee, and what SingleBrew.com sells, is fresh-ground gourmet coffee – but in a tea style bag.

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It’s Time to Get Creative With Promoting Your Website

How often have I heard, “I need more traffic to my website (or blog)” or “My site isn’t being picked up by Search Engines“. A lot.

Here are a few things that maybe you haven’t thought of to increase your website viability.

1. If you haven’t put your website URL into your email signature line, your crazy. Here are some examples:

2. Publish a few articles. Everyone has content on their site that they can turn into an article real quick. Each blog post could probably be an article, each page of your site. Why not? I would suggest get at least 5 out there asap.

3. Are you on Facebook or Twitter? Read more about Social Networking on one of my previous blog posts by clicking here: What is Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Squidoo, and all the others?

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Step-by-Step: How to Make Blog Posts

This post is for HereNextYear clients, designed to teach you how to post to your blog.

  • Go to http://www.domain.com/wp-admin/
  • Enter in your username and password to get to the Dashboard.
  • Click on “Add new post” on the far left column

Now, I will go from the top to the bottom, focusing only in the middle of the page – disregard the right and left sidebars for now.

  • Add a title to your post in the first open box under the words “Add New Post”
  • Just below that, you will see a “Permalink” line. If you click the edit button, you can change the page URL title of your post. It is good to use keyword rich words that are associated with your post topic.
  • Next, you will see an Upload/Insert line (we’ll come back to that later).
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My Crazy Pets Make Me Laugh Daily

I thought I would do a less serious blog post for once and share something with you that makes me laugh every single day.

About 3 years ago, I was on top of the world. I am a big dog person, and that was the time I was able to take Bailey home – a yellow lab from a breeder in Colorado Springs. Bailey (formerly named Moonstar or something) was already almost 6 months old. He had gotten sick as a pup but was completely healthy then, and he and I immediately connected. We shared a lot of laughs as he grew up – when I first brought him home he was TERRIFIED of the stairs … the times when I was in the backyard for 5 hours straight picking up shreds of a pillow he destroyed … ahh … those were the days. The days when he made me mad, but I loved him fully anyway.

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Amber's Latest Blog Post

3
Feb

What’s the Deal with Affiliate Marketing and Social Media?

By: Amber Ludwig, Internet Marketing Coach

By now you’ve heard a little something about affiliate marketing – enough to know you should be an affiliate. You’ve also heard how imperative social media is.

Wanna hear my two cents? Below you’ll find a 20-minute audio where I was interviewed by Pam Zimmer. Feel free to download, SHARE, or listen straight from this post.

What questions did I answer?

  • Why would someone want to sign up as an affiliate and what are the benefits?
  • What is a “mask URL” and when/why would you want to use one?
  • How can you leverage being an affiliate to market and grow your business?
  • If someone is new to social media and wanted to create the most opportunity for a book release, what are the top things they should do?
  • What other tips can I offer to have more success with affiliate marketing and social media?
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