Time is short.  Time is valuable.  Learning to work smarter online instead of harder is a must and learning how to automate updating your statuses with new blog posts is one of these smart things to do!

One of the best ways that I find to maximise my productivity is to use a WordPress plugin called Shorten2Ping.  It allows you to link your Ping.fm account with a url shortening service which means each time you create a blog post and publish it, all the social profiles that you’ve set up will get their status update with details about your blog post.

Setting up your blog this way will save  you hours of time going through and updating each status individually and you can go back at a more convenient time and pick up any comments that your blog post has received.

If you have Google Analytics installed on your website, you can then see at a glance, which of the social profiles is actually driving the most traffic to your website thanks to your blog post.  You can then use this information to  your advantage and instead of wondering which social network to spend your time on and maximise the value of your time, you will know which is bringing in the most traffic, as well as which is converting the best.

Many of you may not have heard about Ping.fm or Bit.ly or Su.pr, so I’ve created a step by step report on how you can set up the accounts you need and install the Shorten2Ping plugin so that you too can automate and make better use of your time.

What do you need to do to get your hands on this report?  Just tweet this blog post to your Twitter followers and be taken directly to download your report.  No signups required!  If you get value in this report, you can get lots more by signing up to our mailing list on the right.

WordPress makes it very easy for visitors to follow your rss feeds and keep up to date with your latest blog posts, however, as an internet marketer (yes that’s you!) and online business owner, you want to be able to mail things to your list that you may not want to necessarily post on your blog.  Exclusive offers, promotional materials, product recommendations are just a few of the examples.

Having visitors sign up to your rss feeds is great but you should always have an alternative, one that you have more control over and that’s where the mailing list opt-in box comes in.  There are several email marketing software companies that you can use to start your mailing list.

There are 3 main autoresponder companies to choose from, each offer either a free trial of their service or a free version, which comes with advertising on each email you send out as well as a limited service (usually just 1 autoresponder per account). This is fine if you are just starting out, however if you are already established, you should have your autoresponder already and this delivery system won’t cost you any extra!

I use GetResponse as my autoresponder, which I’m very happy with and it works out cheaper than Aweber which quite a few of my clients use and Aweber also offer a $1 first month trial. To compare the 2, GetResponse is the cheaper option although the less well known brand (although it’s catching up!) and most of the emails you will receive from internet marketers will be from Aweber, apart from mine!

Another option is Constant Contact which offers a 60 day free trial. This is another great way to get started, without the initial expense.

Have a look at all 3 and choose which one best suits your needs for now and for the immediate future.  Once you’ve signed up and set  up your mailing list, you will be given a code to use to capture email addresses.  This is the code you need to use for the next step.

It is very simple to add an opt-in box to your WordPress blog within the sidebar as a widget.  Go to Appearance – Widgets – and you will see your widget options.  You want to place the code into a TEXT widget, and in the main sidebar, which is usually the right one.  Press save and then you should see your opt-in box appear on your website.

For those of you just starting off with WordPress, perhaps this is the first WordPress installation you’ve ever done, one of things that is often missed out is that the WordPress default privacy settings are set to allow visitors to view your website but not for search engines to find you.  This can be a major problem if you don’t change these settings, however it’s very easy to change.

I’ve fallen foul of this new default setting before.  I’d completed a new WordPress website, submitted it to several directories and search engines, used some high ranked social media sites to create some backlinks, submitted my sitemap to Google, as well as installing Google Analytics, yet even after a week it still wasn’t showing up even although I was searching for the domain name.

Knowing it was something simple, I tried everything I could think of and spent way longer than I should have trying to solve it.  I’m hoping that this blog post will save you hours of frustration and allow you to get listed on the search engines quickly – using the techniques you will find here on this site!

If you think you know how to do it yourself then I would encourage you to try that first (it should take you no longer than 60 seconds to do it).  The best way to learn is by doing, as well as through trial and error.  If you have no idea and just want the answer so that you can get on with other things, then here goes:

Go to the Settings menu and scroll down to Privacy.  It’s in this setting that you can simply change the settings from “show only visitors” to “show everybody”.  Told you it was simple but not exactly obvious for those installing WordPress for the first time.