When you attach a file to an email, you are sending someone a copy of a file that is on your computer. Email programs essentially perform the numerous tasks that used to take a significant amount of time in a matter of a few clicks:

• Making a photocopy of a paper document or getting a reprint of a picture
• Folding and inserting your document into an envelope or inserting the picture
• Writing the sender’s and receiver’s address on the envelope
• Placing a stamp on the envelop
• Driving to the post office
• Waiting one to seven days for the recipient to receive the envelope

This process is (affectionately) referred to as “snail mail.”

Thanks to Microsoft’s Outlook Express, Mac Mail, and the Internet, there are numerous free email programs available. (I cover the pros and cons of the more popular email programs in another blog post.) All email programs have the same basic functionality, allowing you to send and receive email messages along with an attached document or picture. I work in Windows XP and for this particular discussion, I’ve selected Gmail as an example, a free email program from Google, and I show attaching a picture to an email.

The first step is to create the email message in your email program and select the sender, as show in the above screen shot. To attach a file to the email, click the Attach link (often indicated with a paper clip) in your email message. I’ve circled this in the above screen shot. This opens a dialog box opens similar to the one in the screen shot below.

This dialog box allows you to navigate to the location on your computer that contains the file you want to attach. To eliminate confusion, I recommend you always work in the My Documents folder (to learn more about organizing folders and files in My Documents, see ____).

Within the My Documents folder is a list of subfolders (and files). If the file you want to attach is listed, double-click it. If it is not listed, double-click the folder that contains it.

In the screen shot above, note that I double-clicked the My Pictures folder. That is where my photos are located. (To learn more folder and file organization in My Documents, see_.) After you’ve opened your folder a list of files appear similar to the dialog box below. Your file displays may look different, as my computer is set to show file details (name, size, type, date modified, etc). If your dialog box lists file names, click the View Menu icon to change the details view to a thumbnail view.

Changing your View Menu to thumbnails makes it super easy to spot the file or folder you are looking for. See the sample screen shot below. (Note the pictures of the sparkle in my eye along with his pooch!)

In my email (illustrated in the screen shot below), you can see the picture file I double-clicked is now attached to my email message. If you want to attach more files, use the same process. When finished, simply click Send and your email, with attached file(s), is on its way.

In the era of new media publishing, it’s not uncommon to go back to older blog posts to update them with new information and fresh news; adding linkbait, such as a groovy how-to article or running a contest, will also help boost your page rank. While old world thinking would have us believe that what’s published is the final world, the fluid nature of the web and the confluence of ever-evolving information flips the script on that logic and insists that we keep things fresh to stay in the news.

There are a few simple ways to give a face-lift to aging blog posts:

1. I scream, you scream, we all scream for, “Contests!” Contests are a fun way to garner links on older content and a great way to create a new viral campaign.
2. Kill ‘em with kindness. Add a coupon or a rebate reward on an older post and release them out into the wild. This is an easy and people-pleasing way to boost sales and conversions on your site.
3. A picture says a thousand words. Add new graphics or an updated how-to tutorial with a downloadable PDF link and re-release with a new marketing push.
4. Lists, lists, lists. People love a list. If you have a blog post about widgets that is ranking well but still not hitting the first page, spruce it up with a “Best of____ ” or “Top Ten Predictions for _____” list.

Once what’s old is made new again, there are a few tricks to resubmitting your rejuvenated article to the major social networking channels. You can add the “#” or “?” character at the end of a URL that 301 redirects back to the original URL. Additionally, you can create a new URL for the refurbished blog post with a date update, so the article is still available in the archives. For example, update the original title with a new date:

domainname.com/awesomewidgets/

domainname.com/awesomewidgets/2009

Adding valuable content to existing material is a win for your readerships and helps fortify your page rank. Don’t let your old posts get dusty on the shelf. Keep it fresh and stay newsworthy!

The third box has opened! Trumpets blare! Confetti rains down on hundreds of rising balloons! And from inside leaps out Firefox! Wait… just Firefox? Everybody knows about Firefox already. I hoped that some brand new web browser would be unleashed this year (like last year’s Flock) and wow us all.
But maybe I spoke too soon. This is not just regular meat and potatoes Firefox. This year we have a host of plugins to install into its bushy little tail, all of which are valuable tools for the Internet marketer’s tool belt.

Google Global
Basically, this plugin makes Google believe that you are a world-traveling web user and allows you to switch Google search results from USA to Europe to China, etc. This allows you to understand markets outside of the US (assuming that’s where you are reading from).

Search Status
From the Firefox website:

“Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyzer, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.”

This plugin allows you to see the competition with their pants down. It gives instant insight into why each search result is at a particular rating and what you need to do to compete with them. Now later in the challenge a program called Market Samurai is going to do this same thing for us in greater depth. But the “Search Status” icon allows us to get this information at a glance instead of running another program.

SEO for Firefox
This works in conjunction with Search Status to give you a quick rundown of a website’s stats, such as the age of the site, how many times it’s been book linked to del.i.cious, and identifies no follow links, to name a few. More to be learned about this tool later.

StumbleUpon toolbar
Be careful. This tool has locked me into the web for hours! But it’s no wonder; the content is rad! StumbleUpon allows you and others to rank websites you visit with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. If you give your own website a thumbs up, Google notices and it can help your page rank an iota. The fun part though, is hitting the StumbleUpon button which, based on your interests, randomly picks out a well-ranked site for you to “stumble upon.” Because the ranking process keeps getting refined by yourself and all other users, the content is usually quite well put together and creative.

Cool Previews
When you hover over a link, this plugin opens a window so that you can glance at the linked-to content without having to open a new tab or window.

FasterFox
Speeds up the Firefox browser. Rev it up to turbo, but if you’re sharing bandwidth with others, it is going to eat up a lot of it. Sharing is caring.

“I’m trying to figure out what the hell and how the hell this Twitter is going to help.” Jack Nicholson.

Alright, the second box in the 30 Day Challenge Pre-Season has opened and a little blue bird has popped out. Clicking on this bird leads us to the “Twitter” tutorial. Now Twitter confused me a little bit at first and to be honest its implications are still unclear to me, but in a nutshell, it’s glorified texting. Your messages can be 140 characters long and are known as “Tweets” (which explains the picture of the blue bird). Who do you tweet? Well your friends, family and, heck, whatever crazies you allow to keep up with your life. So now you can communicate with vast numbers of people about your thoughts on important current events or something as banal as what you just ate for lunch.

On the flipside, you can follow people that you are interested in. It is fairly popular to follow celebrities, since Star and People magazine haven’t provided enough minutia already. Or you can follow someone you find intriguing for other reasons. A hero, a forerunner in your field, or in our case, Ed Dale.
For the purposes of online marketing, Twitter is valuable for generating “buzz.” The messages you post on Twitter (tweets) can be re-posted by other users, exponentially growing as more users decide to re-post those tweets. You could tweet about your product or just something interesting and a link back to your website. Then watch the traffic filter in.

Total time to set up a Twitter account: four minutes.

Before the Thirty Day Challenge gets up and running, participants need to download and learn how to use all the right equipment to move at a steady pace throughout the 30 days. This is pre-season, and it gets started a month before the actual challenge gets underway.

At www.thirtydaychallenge.com/training/ you’ll find collected on one page boxes containing each tool to be added during the pre-season. Like those advent calendars that count down the days until Christmas, each box is opened one at a time throughout the month. Out pops the icon for each tool, many of which have never been seen by the general public.

In the first box we have Ustream. Your Ustream is similar to Skype and iChat in the way that you can stream video in real time. But where Ustream differs is that it is also like YouTube. Instead of reaching just your business partner, you can stream to hundreds or thousands of people who subscribe to your channel.

Ed Dale and his team will be streaming video describing what to do in each leg of the challenge. You can also just read the text version instructions on each leg of the challenge, but then you miss some details and the pleasure of Ed telling you about his lousy guitar playing. So on day 1 of the pre-season, subscribe to the Thirty Day Challenge Ustream channel to keep up to date.

This took me three minutes.

That’s what I asked my college friend Elliot two years ago when he called me up to tell me about a new money making scheme he was trying. I’d never known Elliot to be into money making schemes or financing, so this was odd news. Elliot was better known for growing grass (of the turf variety) on his bedroom floor and walking around town barefoot with a copy of one of Carlos Castaneda’s books in his backpack. Yet despite his hippie eccentricities, Elliot is very smart and likes to expand his mind, not with drugs but with Lacanian psychoanalysis and physics. So when he told me he was doing something called the Thirty Day Challenge, I suspected it might be off-beat and possibly brilliant. And I was right.

Intrigued and curious, I Googled “Thirty Day Challenge” and soon met Ed Dale, a self-described “tubby-nerd,” introducing the Thirty Day Challenge in an informal web video. While it is true that Ed is a bit overweight and definitely well schooled in the ways of nerd-speak, he is also a charismatic teacher with a jovial Australian accent that simultaneously put me at ease and made me want to hear more of what he had to say.

Ed’s passion (and the goal of his “challenge”) is to teach you how to make $1 in 30 days through the web using a variety of Internet marketing techniques. He systematically teaches you the steps to go through, from marketing ignorance to receiving cash in your PayPal account. Briefly, you find a niche market, create content on a web page, and then find a product.

For example, if you found Nikon digital cameras interesting and learned there was an opening in the market (as Ed will help you discover), you might write articles reviewing the different models on your website. There is your market and content. Lastly, what is it that people who search for Nikon digital cameras tend to buy? It may be something like a magazine which you can create an affiliate link to. The link leads buyers to the magazine which then gives you a percentage of the sale for the referral.

The Thirty Day Challenge runs live starting August 1, 2009, as it has for the past 4 years, but the material stays up all year so you can start at any time. It’s just more fun to keep up with action as it’s happening.

This year I’m writing a blog post covering each day of the challenge, giving an overview of what is covered and adding peripheral information to help make the Thirty Day Challenge easier. The Thirty Day Challenge is a perfect way for the individual or small business owner to find out how to effectively market their products on the Internet using tools and ideas that are readily accessible to anyone.

Good blogging advice serves the blog reader as well as the writer.  In fact, the best blogging advice will always create value on both sides of the equation.  Think of it at Blog karma.  One of the best blogging ideas is to provide tools to your readers that will help them do what they want to with your content.  (Hint: it’s what you want them to do also.)  More specifically, you should allow your readers various ways to interact with your blog content, be it bookmarking, sharing, saving, or emailing. Given the chance, they could be your greatest promoters.

Below are my top 9 social media WordPress plugins:

1. Add To Any

Allows readers to share, save, bookmark, and email your posts using 122 different social sites. Very easy to use and compact, also allows you to customize the look.

2. WP Digg This

Adds the Digg button to your posts with the added option of choosing which posts you want to add it too.

3. Social Bookmarks

Adds the social media buttons to the end of your posts. You can also select which media site to show and use.

4. HB Social Bookmarks

If you’d like to add the feature to a sidebar this plugin will do just that. You can choose which site to show and use.

5. Share This

This is possibly the most popular social media plugin. It’s very simple, compact, and clean looking.

6. Sociable

You can’t go wrong with a plugin by Joost de Valk aka Yoast. It adds the social sites to the end of your posts and again you can choose which to use.

7. Twitter For WordPress

This will display your Tweets on your sidebar.

8. WP To Twitter

This works in the opposite direction of the above. It send a Twitter Update when you post something new on your blog.

9. Meet Your Commenters

This is a very unique and smart plugin. When someone leaves a comment it will show the profiles of the sites they are a member of in the dashboard so that you may add them.

Blogging advice – while you’re thinking about tools for sharing content – make sure your content is share-worthy!  This is something I remind myself of daily.

Living as a self-professed new media junkie, I harbor a not-so-secret passion for utilizing emerging technologies for online marketing, business branding, and community building.  As feature writer and creator of Promotional Magazine’s, “Social Media Gallery,” I developed an online column that spotlighted social media marketing trends and innovative online marketing practices.

Currently, I create custom web marketing and social networking campaigns for personal and business branding and I am the feature writer on social media trends and best practices at BloggingRockstar.com. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing with credits that include: Out Magazine, Promotional Magazine, ReveNews, and IntoWine.com.

I developed a curiosity in the psychological principles that drive markets, unexpectedly, while working on my bachelor’s degree. Fulfilling required classes in social psychology, industrial/organizational psychology, and cognitive psychology granted me a basic understanding of what motivates people’s behavior as group members, team members, and as individuals.

I was first introduced to Internet marketing by participating in the Thirty Day Challenge several years ago. It is the easiest, cheapest, and most fun way I’ve found to be educated on the subject. Since then I’ve been studying SEO, Internet applications, and Internet marketing. I still participate in the Thirty Day Challenge and have blogged a day-by-day account of the 2009 challenge and posted it here on Blogging Rockstar.

Fortunately, the trend to create a successful online presence these days is to actually offer real value to customers and encourage communication between them and you. The tricky part is finding out what you can offer them of real value and how to get the attention of those looking. My background in psychology has helped me with both and I plan to continue sharing my insights in the pages of my blogs.

In additional to studying psychology, I also teach music to students of widely varying ages. Through this I have learned the importance of simplicity, patience, and step-by-step instruction when imparting information.

For those of you seasoned computer users, how many times have you heard questions like these: “How do I attach a file in an email?” “What is a link?” “Can you help me with my computer?” Now there’s a loaded question! I admire my 71-year old dad for learning as much as he has, but when I actually sit down at his computer, reality hits. I could spend days fixing everything, or wipe the hard drive and start over.

I have 14 years of professional writing experience. Along with college, I also received a rare opportunity to not only have my education paid for, but to work as a junior technical writer, undergoing an on-the-job mentorship from top senior writers. This experience exceeded anything I learned in the classroom. After years in Portland, Oregon, I discovered a niche market in Bozeman, Montana, and started my own professional writing business.

So, in the spirit of entrepreneurship, I have decided to focus my blog entries on folks who are starting their own business but lack the technical savvy when it comes to the Internet. In today’s world, you need a website, an email address, the ability to send and receive files, and most importantly, Internet etiquette. I intend to share some of the “secrets” I’ve learned en route and pass them along. I am thrilled with the idea of helping even one individual in their road to success.