You can get your copy by clicking here.

Now, for the 1 or 2 of  ya’ll who haven’t clicked let’s jump into the longer review. For the folks who still aren’t sure what’s going on I’ll provide a full clear disclaimer; we built the WordPress plugin Social Quote Traffic so as you can imagine this review could possibly be biased.

So why did we build this must have plugin? First, let’s talk about pull quotes.

Why Pull Quotes?

Pull quotes are used to emphasize excerpts of text. Since users almost never read but scan you need to provide them with some focus anchors to fix their attention to the most important parts of your articles.

Expert copywriters know that people first read the headline, then they scan to see what your content, article or advertisement is about. This is why pull quotes or “leads” have a high attention rate. They stand out so people stop and read. Often they read pull quotes before they dive in and read further.

You see pull quotes in websites, news articles, magazines, and even advertising. Pull quotes also break up your content, making it easier on the eyes and giving an element of aesthetic design.

Why Socially Connect Pull Quotes?

Increasingly the social signals you have on your website and content play a role in authority, search, and people deciding to share your content. The more shares you get the more traffic you get.

There really are 3 reasons people interacting with your site and content are becoming more important.

1. Authority. It builds authority – when someone visits your site before they go further they look for indicators of who you are, can you be trusted, etc. Think of all the top sites you know of…
2. Search and SEO. Increasingly it’s important if you want to be found in search that your site has to be sending the right social signals.
3. Traffic. The more you can get people to engage with your content the more traffic you will get, the more it will be shared, and ultimately the more authority and search traffic you can build. It a lot of ways social engagement is the first turn of the wheel in digital marketing success.

With Social Quote Traffic you socially enable your pull quotes. What this really does it prompt yoru reader to share that individual quote. For each social quote you add you increase your content’s sharing ability.

That’s ultimately why we created Social Quote Traffic, we wanted a way to increase the social engagement for our content.

How Easy is Social Quote Traffic to Use?

It’s simple. Once you’ve installed the plugin you can edit in real time your social pull quote. The admin panel is well laid out and provides easy to use inputs, color pickers, and sliders. You can visit here to see more admin screenshots.

Here are some of the things you can change and modify:

• Choose which social accounts you want displayed
• Custom redirect with Facebook
• Font style, type, and color
• Add or remove a quote icon
• Social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ (more to come)
• Padding and margins
• Borders: color, type, and size
• Background colors
• Plus much more…

All of this with no coding required.

How Do You Add Social Quotes to Your Content?

It’s simple to enter a quote or multiple quotes into your content. You simply highlight over your text and click the shortcode button. From there you can set some specific settings for that shortcode or use the defaults. It’s that simple.

Once again, when you add a socially connected pull quote to your content your instantly increasing the sharing opportunity. For most pieces of content it shouldn’t be hard to find at least one great pull quote. Posts that range in 500-1,000 words you can usually find 2 good areas for pull quotes.

What Could Be Better?

I have to say the execution of this plugin is spot on. But there are few more improvements I’d like to see.

Possibly the ability to customize the quote even more, something like the ability to customize every element so I could have a top border or just a bottom border. The ability to add some other custom text elements that are common to many pull quotes you see throughout the interwebs.

Also, more social accounts would be good addition.

Finally, the ultimate feature would be the ability to add multiple customized quote types. Sure you can do that right now with custom CSS but what if that was built right into the tool? Yes, that would be awesome.

Updated response from developer (us): All the above features are in the product roadmap. Buying today will give you lifetime updates and a multi-site license allowing you to use Social Quote Traffic on as many of your own sites as you like.

In Closing: Do We Recommend Social Quote Traffic?

Yes. Once again you can learn more about the plugin and watch an overview video by visiting Social Quote Traffic.

Like any top 10+ list of books choosing which books cover copywriting is tough. If we left any out feel free to add them below. We should also mention all of these books are currently on our bookshelf (both real and virtual).  

There’s something magical about the written word (even in a blog form). See when something is written, even written by an obvious crackpot (uh, wait where is this argument going) … it has the aura of credibility.

Obviously if the idea is way out there, the number of people who will buy into the idea will be small, but there will be some people. And it only takes some people to start a revolution (if you’re into that sort of thing) or become fanatical about your product or idea. And that persuasion happens because of the power of the written word.

But there’s an even more powerful thing that happens when someone reads the words you write. It’s the voices in our head …

Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and even change how we act in life… The brain, it seems, does not make much of a distinction between reading about an experience and encountering it in real life; in each case, the same neurological regions are stimulated.

Increasingly we are learning that stories and the written word impact our thoughts and emotions in ways we’ve always known, but now are being confirmed by science.

What Does This Mean For You?

In getting someone to work with you, buy your product, or even spread your idea, your credibility is being checked within the first second. But even more deeply is the connection someone has with you.

If you think of your favorite book you’ve read, by the end you feel like you know the character. In many ways they are real (meaning you know they are out there somewhere). Even though in the back of your mind you know they aren’t, they are fiction, but the story was so powerful (and as we are finding) the connections in your mind make it so you functionally can’t tell the difference.

That’s why it’s important to master the written word. That’s why content marketing is an effective strategy when it has heart and a voice.

To learn how to employ the written word to maximum effect check out our Top Copywriting Books and Top Storytelling books.

Image by Chiara Marra

It’s comes down to four components:

1. Deconstruct the skill – break down what you want to learn into smaller pieces.
2. Learn enough to self correct – get enough information so you can practice sooner and get better
3. Remove practice barriers – basically create some focused time
4. Practice at least 20 hours – Get over the frustration barrier and focus

Interesting model and worth looking at how you can incorporate in your own life or business.

On that same note here’s an interesting post Why the “10,000 hour rule” isn’t actually a rule and a a look at the Complexity of Greatness: Beyond Talent or Practice.

Exercise Less?

The next one is outside of what we typically talk about but along the same lines. It’s a somewhat older short video about high intensity interval training.

I’ve found looking at sales as a form of hunting helps us focus on the type and makeup of  team.

In sales there are 3 types of hunters.

There’s the hunter who wakes up hours before the sun rises. It’s still dark as he enters the bush, searching for prey to trap or kill. This hunter loves the thrill of the hunt. Sure it’s about providing food for the family, but there’s also a certain amount of satisfaction for the game itself.

Then there’s the hunter who instead of getting up early has found the perfect spot in a tree directly with line of a game trail. This hunter is patient, doesn’t like rustling through the bushes, but he is smart. He knows that if he waits long enough, eventually dinner will cross his path giving, him the perfect shot.

Finally, there is the hunter who never leaves the campfire. If errant game happens to stumble within yards of the camp, then the family is going to eat that day. Otherwise they are eating roots and berries.

Or, in the case of managing or hiring, what type of hunter you’re hiring.

The majority of sales people are like the hunter in the tree. They find a tried and tested path and fall into the rhythm. Only one day no game comes down the trail. So the next day they go back to the tree and the same thing happens.

Then, the third day, suddenly game shows only barely moving. The hunter in the tree takes aim and finally has meat on the menu. Only with closer inspection he sees an arrow in the side of his prey. The first hunter had already wounded the beast.

There’s quite a few good sales people who are like the hunter in the tree.

Many of us can sit in a tree (and let referrals come in), ultimately those are the easy sales for which you should strive.

Not all of us are like the first hunter, the one who loves the thrill of the hunt.

But what if you are the last hunter … the one who never leaves the camp fire? Sure you might stumble upon some sales, but ultimately you’re always going to be hungry.

A good sales manager will be able to see what type of hunter a sales person is and plan accordingly.

For the individual, you have to figure out real quick what type of hunter you are.

In the end, we are all hunters (sales people).

You can also check out our list Top Sales Books.
Image by BrianPirie.

Your Product is your best form of Marketing.

Have you played the telephone game? You know the one where one person whispers a sentence and by the end it gets all garbled? Well I’m at the end of this chain except with the advent of copy and paste the message is no longer lost. I found the below quote from Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) on Mitch Joels blog (who found it on another blog… who found it somewhere else). The bottom line is the quote is accurate…

“Before if you were making a product, the right business strategy was to put 70% of your attention, energy, and dollars into shouting about a product, and 30% into making a great product. So you could win with a mediocre product, if you were a good enough marketer. That is getting harder to do. The balance of power is shifting toward consumers and away from companies…the individual is empowered… The right way to respond to this if you are a company is to put the vast majority of your energy, attention and dollars into building a great product or service and put a smaller amount into shouting about it, marketing it. If I build a great product or service, my customers will tell each other.”

Awesome quote and it clearly states where we are in marketing and the greater importance of word of mouth. Now Mitch Joel’s thoughts on this are “the individual is empowered” is code for Social Media. I agree on that but only to a point. Yes social media is a game changer in marketing but the main game changer is the speed at which we can communicate. Social media facilitates communication but is not the main driver for communication… minor point though, the bigger point that rings true is exactly what Mr. Bezos stated.

Your Product is Your Marketing

Any good word of mouth professor will tell you this is the key to a groundswell of buzz and up until a few years ago makers of products and firms who delivered service could drown out the negative. They could deliver a sub-par product, a clicker that didn’t quite click, a chain saw that didn’t quite cut, and in the end with mass media and controlled communication they would sell.

 Now the instant a movie or even a product hits the shelves a wave of blog posts, Twitter updates, Facebook updates, Skype conversations, Ning threads, and text and instant messages begin to fire up. There is no central control and no one parroted message.

Your Answer

The answer is simple. Create products that exceed expectations and deliver beyond their intended purpose.[/social_quote] For a service focus on your touch points with a customer and exceed expectations, communication, and over-deliver on the main benefit that your service provides.

Yes, that should have been your mission all along but many companies, brands, and services lost focus because the message could be blasted–thus partially controlled. Are we (and you) prepared for the next level of product and service innovation?

But hidden within this easy modification is a problem (deep ominous music begins to play). Because of the open nature of WordPress just about anybody (like us) can create a plugin or theme. While this allows for tons of great additions it also injects a little bit of a challenge.

We’ve experienced this first hand. Recently a few plugins we had installed on a some of our sites caused huge memory issues. These memory issues increasingly caused our sites to fail. Since then we’ve been extra careful about the plugins we let into our server environment.

So while WordPress is full of goodness it’s increasingly becoming important that you watch each and every plugin you install. That’s when we thought, hey let’s create a post of the Top WordPress plugins we use.

Through the last few years we’ve used some WordPress plugins that range from the good, the bad, and the down right shameless. The list that follows are plugins we’ve pronounced (trumpets) as officially rock.

Added note: A general rule to follow with WordPress is only install the plugins you need and use. Usually this number is around 10 – 25 plugins, depending on your site and needs.

Also note that that this is a mix of free and paid plugins. There’s a reason for that. We’ve found that when a plugin is free it’s often neglected or isn’t made with the same care and attention as a paid version. So more times than not we tend to go with the paid version of plugins, especially if we are going to use it on multiple sites. If we chose not to mention a plugin you think should be on the list please mention it below. Finally, we will update this list as we remember, find, and use more plugins that rock.

Let’s roll:

Curation Traffic Plugin

Official shameless plug. We created a content curation plugin called Curation Traffic. It allows you to bring the power of content curation to any WordPress based blog or website.

With a click of a button you can easily find thumbnails, auto-summarize content, easily summarize list posts, and also auto includes attribution. Our plugin is designed to make content curation a snap.

In addition it finds Twitter users allowing you to find engagement opportunities and shortcuts to easily share your curated content connecting to services such as Hootsuite, Buffer, Pinterest, and Sharethis.

Social Quote Traffic

Here’s we go again… another plug. Want to increase your engagement, your social shares, and your traffic? That’s why we developed Social Quote Traffic, an easy way to create socially enabled eye-catching, share inducing pull quotes.

You can see this plugin in action above. Create quotes in your content and prompt your reader to share individual quotes. Share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Currently Social Quote Traffic is in alpha so there is a special introductory price. Learn more about creating socially connected pull quotes.

After the Deadline

Checks spelling, detects misused words, checks style, checks grammar, and explains errors. It does all t his in real time and works much better than the out the box spell check that comes with WordPress.

This plugin goes above and beyond in checking your spelling but it also ensures your writing is grammatically correct.  A huge bonus!

Ninja Popups

Ninja popups does just what it says… well minus ninja’s and throwing strars.

It allows you to easily create popups and connects with just about every major email provider out there. In addition it also connects to Linkedin, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and much more. One of the best popup type plugins on the market.

WordPress Ajax Contact Form (with Attachments)

The w2 Ajax Contact Form for WordPress is a complete solution to create ajax contact form in WordPress. Designed to be a flexible plugin, this item offer classics and originals features fully configurables via Admin Plugin Interface. You can easily create your own forms HTML templates (add or remove fields) and your own themes CSS.

This is a good fallback to not using Gravity Forms also listed on this post.

Shortcoder

Shortcoder is a plugin which allows to create a custom shortcode and store HTML, Javascript and other snippets in it.

So if that shortcode is used in any post or pages, then the code stored in the shortcode get executed in that place. Create “custom shortcodes” easily and use them within WordPress. Use any kind of HTML as Shortcode content.

We use shortcoder on most of our websites, especially sales sites where we might want to show a pricing table on each and every page but want the flexibility to easily change things site wide.

W3 Total Cache

W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration. They call it WordPress Performance Optimization (WPO) framework; designed to improve user experience and page speed.

Compatible with shared hosting, virtual private / dedicated servers and dedicated servers / clusters. Up to 80% bandwidth savings via minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and feeds

WordPress SEO by Yoast

This plugin is written from the ground up by WordPress SEO consultant and WordPress developer Joost de Valk to improve your site’s SEO on all needed aspects. While this WordPress SEO plugin goes the extra mile to take care of all the technical optimization, more on that below, it first and foremost helps you write better content. WordPress SEO forces you to choose a focus keyword when you’re writing your articles, and then makes sure you use that focus keyword everywhere.

Using the snippet preview you can see a rendering of what your post or page will look like in the search results, whether your title is too long or too short and your meta description makes sense in the context of a search result.

The plugin also allows you to write meta titles and descriptions for all your category, tag and custom taxonomy archives, giving you the option to further optimize those pages.

Combined, this plugin makes sure that your content is the type of content search engines will love!

P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler)

This plugin creates a profile of your WordPress site’s plugins’ performance by measuring their impact on your site’s load time. Often times, WordPress sites load slowly because of poorly configured plugins or because there are so many of them.

By using the P3 plugin, you can narrow down anything causing slowness on your site. In many ways the P3 plugin points you in the right direction or at the very least ensures your using trusted and memory efficient plugins.

Social Author Bio

Social Author Bio adds a author bio box with the author’s avatar with built-in and custom social icons on pages/posts. Fully integrated Google+ authorship (shows Google+ Avatar in search results).

Built in Social Icons: AIM, Digg, eMail, Facebook, Google+, iCompositions, ICQ, LinkedIn, MSN, MySpace, Pinterest, Reverbnation, Skype, Soundcloud, Technorati, Twitter, Yahoo, YouTube. Also, Admin can create up to 5 custom social icons.

List.ly

Plugin to easily integrate List.ly lists to Posts and Pages. It allows publishers to add/edit lists, add items to list and embed lists using shortcode.

This plugin (and site) is our preferred method for creating high impact and dynamic lists. You can view a few of our lists here:

• Top Marketing Books
• Top Storytelling Books
• Top Sales Books
• Top Books That Could Change Your Life
• Top Business and Entrepreneurial Podcasts
• Best History Books
• Top Copywriting Books

WPtouch

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress website for mobile devices, complete with ajax loading articles and smooth effects when viewed from popular mobile web browsing devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, Android mobile phones, BlackBerry OS6+ mobile devices, and more!

The admin panel allows you to customize many aspects of its appearance, and deliver a fast, user-friendly and stylish version of your site to touch mobile visitors, without modifying a single bit of code (or affecting) your regular desktop theme.

Hybrid Connect

In-Content Opt-In Forms. Easily add an opt-in form to the bottom of your blog posts, or anywhere in your content! You can easily add any opt-in form to your blog sidebar or any other widget area on your website.

It also makes it drop dead simple to add lightbox/popup forms allowing you to create unblockable popup forms to grab your visitor’s attention and get record opt-in rates. You can also create attention-grabbing forms that slide in from the bottom, side or top of the page or post.

A huge bonus to this plugin is that you can also create squeeze pages. It allows you to create high-converting squeeze pages, as easily as creating any of the other opt-in types!

Comment List Building – Add an option for your readers to easily opt-in with one click, when they leave a comment. Also built in is split testing  where you can create multiple variations of any opt-in form and test them against each other, easy as pie.

A few bonus features that makes this plugin a cut above is the Facebook Connect  so you can Use Facebook Connect signups and get verified, valuable email addresses from your visitors! Finally they have GoToWebinar Integration  allowing you to sign your visitors up to a GoToWebinar event and any mailing list at the same time.

This plugin has quickly become one of our favorite list building plugins.

Pretty Link

Pretty Link enables you to shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)!

In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host.

Pretty Link is a killer plugin for people who want to clean up their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, their links on Twitter to come from their own domain, or generally increase the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.

Blubrry PowerPress

Blubrry PowerPress brings the essential features for podcasting to WordPress including full iTunes support, web audio/video media players and more. We’ve been doing audio content and podcasting for a few years and this is the plugin we’ve used since day one.

It provides not only easy set up but if you need to get in there and create some custom settings it most likely has it. You can see it in action in the Content Curation Show.

A quick note that iTunes can make up between 50 and 95 percent of a podcaster’s audience. PowerPress comes with the following iTunes specific features:

• Tunes compliant podcast feeds: The appropriate tags are added to your feeds so your iTunes listing looks great.
• Optimized iTunes Summary: Converts your blog post content to a format suited for viewing in iTunes
• Upload iTunes Artwork: Upload and change your iTunes artwork directly from within PowerPress settings.
• iTunes podcasting specifications fully supported.

If you’re doing any type of podcasting or audio we suggest you check out PowerPress.

Covert Messenger Pro

This plugin was one we didn’t think would have a long shelf life. We thought we would test it out and after a few weeks we would un-install it. Well going on close to a year now it’s still standing strong.

What does this plugin do? If you look down below you’ll see a message from us about Curation Traffic. That’s what the plugin does, it allows you to place an attention grabbing conversation box on your site. This little box continually surprises us in it’s ability to convert.

The style you see below is the Facebook look but you have other options, such as AIM, ICQ, MSN, Chat Bar, Yahoo, plus complete customization.

We suggest you test it on your site and see if it can capture attention and  ultimately convert.

Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades

Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades was created to make the life of WordPress users easier.

Without this plugin, the only upgrade path you have for download zip plugins and themes is to deactivate the theme/plugin, delete it, upload, and reactivate. With this plugin, upgrading is as simple as selecting the zip file to upload, selecting “Yes” from a drop-down, and clicking “Install Now”.

This plugin makes managing WordPress themes and plugins that much easier.

Livefyre Realtime Comments

Livefyre’s real-time apps get your audience talking and turn your site into the hub for your community. Bloggers, brands and the largest publishers in the world use Livefyre to engage their users and curate live content from around the social web.

Easy to install and free for bloggers. Our advanced commenting platform features Livefyre Comments 3, real-time admin dashboard, and user profiles. Allows users to tag friends in various social networks and bring them into the conversation

Quick Page/Post Redirect Plugin

Redirect Pages/Posts to another page/post or external URL. Has edit box as well as global options. Specify the redirect Location and type. Works with new WordPress menus. Works with new WordPress Custom Post Types (set option on settings page). Disabled in 5.0.3: [jQuery integration for more enhanced re-writes (set option on settings page)]. You can set a redirect page or menu link to open in a new window (will not work on permalinks). You can redirect without needing to create a Page or Post. This is very useful for sites that were converted to WordPress and have old links that create 404 errors (see FAQs for more information). This option does not allow for open in a new window or nofollow functions.

Social Metrics Pro

Social Metrics Pro Tracks Tweets, Likes, Pins, +1s and more right from your WordPress Dashboard! Powerful Dashboard to centrally monitor social activity across leading social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Digg and LinkedIn.

You choose which networks you wish to track. Sort your data to identify which posts are performing best on which social networks. Perform keyword searches to study posts related to certain topics. Filter by post type, category, publishing date or by post authors. Social Metrics Pro sports Excel-like conditional formatting. Posts with highest number of shares show up green. Posts with low social media activity show up amber and red. Turn reds to greens and you are on your way to social media success.

Special Recent Posts

Special Recent Posts PRO is a very powerful plugin/widget for WordPress which displays your recent posts with thumbnails. It’s the perfect solution for online magazines or simple blogs and it comes with more than 30+ customization options available.

You can dynamically re-size thumbnails to any desired dimension, drag multiple widget instances and configure each one with its specific settings.

You should also check out Special Recent Posts Pro.

Sucuri Security

Sucuri SiteCheck will check for malware, spam, blacklisting and other security issues like .htaccess redirects, hidden eval code, etc. The best thing about it is it’s completely free.

You can also scan your site at SiteCheck.Sucuri.net. Sucuri SiteCheck detects various types of malware, SPAM injections, website errors, disabled sites, database connection issues and code anomalies that require special attention to include…

Also check for Obfuscated JavaScript injections, Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Website Defacements, Hidden & Malicious iFrames, PHP Mailers, Phishing Attempts, Malicious Redirects, Backdoors (e.g., C99, R57, Webshells), Anomalies, Drive-by-Downloads, IP Cloaking, Social Engineering Attacks, plus much more.

Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner

The recent Timthumb.php vulnerability (discussed here) has left scores of unsuspecting bloggers hacked. It’s the perfect combination of not so easy to fix for the technically disinclined, and easy to find and exploit for the malicious – resulting in a disastrous number of compromised sites.

The Timthumb Vulnerability Scanner plugin will scan your entire wp-content directory for instances of any outdated and insecure version of the timthumb script, and give you the option to automatically upgrade them with a single click. Doing so will protect you from hackers looking to exploit this particular vulnerability.

OSE Firewall

OSE Firewall™ – A WordPress Firewall created by Open Source Excellence. It protects your WordPress-powered blog against attacks and hacking. The built-in scanner can scan your websites for malicious codes.

The newly added Anti-Spam function utilizes the IP pools in stopforumspam.com to keep your website spam free! Detailed description can be found in our main website here.

WordPress Editorial Calendar

Did you remember to write a post for next Tuesday? What about the Tuesday after that? WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published.

You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog. This plugin makes managing your editorial calendar a breeze.

Anti-Malware (Get Off Malicious Scripts)

This Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware plugin searches for Malware and other Virus like threats and vulnerabilities on your server and it helps you remove them.

You can set up Automatic removal of “Known Threats”. It also downloads definitions of new threat as they are discovered.

Automatically upgrade vulnerable versions of timthumb to patch security holes. Customize Scan Setting. Run a Quick Scan from the admin menu or a Complete Scan from the Settings Page.

Banner Rotator / Content Slider WordPress Plugin

All In One is an Advanced Jquery Slider WordPress plugin which comes in 5 flavors: Banner Rotator, Thumbnails Banner, Banner with Playlist, Content Slider, Carousel.

It allows you to easily create powerful sliders with animated text using HTML standard tags, making the slider very easy to setup and maintain.

The All in cone Banner Rotator is a plugin we constantly go back to when we need sliders and other related content elements.

Fanciest Author Box

Fanciest Author Box is a WordPress plugin developed by ThematoSoup. It’s long list of features allows you to give identity to your single or multi-author WordPress blog.

This premium author bio plugin is very easy to use and customize. Right after installation the author bio is, by default, enabled on all your posts, pages and custom post types. You can also implement it as a widget in your sidebars, as a template tag or manually using a shortcode. It’s translation ready and users color pickers which allow you to set your own color scheme.
Social widgets are a nice asset that let you present yourself in a more personal manner and enable people to connect with you easily.

WordPress Ajax Contact Form with attachments

The w2 Ajax Contact Form for WordPress is a complete solution to create ajax contact form in WordPress. Designed to be a flexible plugin, this item offer classics and originals features fully configurables via Admin Plugin Interface.

You can easily create your own forms HTML templates (add or remove fields) and your own themes CSS. The drag’n’drop No Spam Control is an user friendly alternative to the traditionnal Captcha. It is not a simple drag’n’drop feature to display the send Button. It is a complete solution for anti spam.

SocialBox – Social WordPress Widget

With SocialBox you get an absolutely easy to use WordPress Plugin which enables you to add a sleek social widget to your WordPress site or blog.

It supports several social networks and displays the current numbers of Facebook Page Likes, Twitter, Dribbble, Forrst and Digg Followers and YouTube and Vimeo Channel Subscriptions. You can enter default values which will be shown as a fallback if the related API is not reachable.

Pure CSS Responsive Pricing Tables

This CSS Responsive Pricing Table plugin will help you to create unlimited CSS Responsive pricing tables with unlimited combination of colors and styles to suit your existing wordpress theme.

This CSS Responsive Pricing Tables plugin is packed with 10 Easy Customizable Predefined Themes. It’s a perfect addition to a site where you might want to test pricing or roll out a minimal viable product.

WordPress Events Calendar

Professional and elegant plugin that adds an Event Calendar to your posts or pages.Elegant & Sleek Design.

It has Languages Support, Cross Browser Support, Multi calendars in a page or post, Upcoming Events Widget, Simple to Customize, and it’s Well Documented.

Dynamic Step Process Panels for WordPress

Dynamic Step Process Panels for WordPress is a lightweight plugin for WordPress. It allows that any content can be represented in any number of tabs / steps. Can be used to do Presentation of bulleted content, Multisteps forms, Provide a description of products, Viewing photos, Loading content from files via AJAX, Anything that comes to your mind.

VidEmbed Video Plugin

Embed videos in posts, pages and widget areas. With just one-click, VidEmbed adds video content from various sources including self-hosted video files, YouTube or Vimeo. Customize video embeds and video player styles (like theme and frame colors) for a consistent look site-wide.

VidEmbed Shortcode Button — Adds a button to the WYSIWYG editor for quick and easy video embeds to posts, pages or widget content. Supports Multiple Video Sources — Add stand-alone videos (flv, mp4 and mov formats), Amazon S3 hosted videos or videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

Also included is an Open Source Video Player — In addition to the YouTube and Vimeo Players, VidEmbed includes an open source video player for self-hosted videos. Customizable Player Settings — Specify player theme, color options, fonts, frame color and more.

Video Gallery WordPress Plugin

Responsive, localized and fully featured. This fast plugin allows you to create a video gallery.

It comes with two skins + skin generator – choose from Complete or Light skin for every gallery you setup. It’s alo iPhone/iPad compatible by generateing html5 videos players.

It’s alos full of choices you can set up the gallery just by imputing your YouTube user/playlist in the ‘feed’ tag of the xml file. All descriptions/titles/thumbs/videos will be feeded directly from YouTube so you won’t need to write anything other then that.

This plugin is great for creating a custom playlist of videos on your blog.

WPSubscribers

With WPSubscribers, you can create unlimited number of subscribe forms include popup forms, footer bar forms, custom forms, exit popups… and each of them can has its own content and can be used separated at the same time.

WPSubscribers can be used with any email service such as Aweber, Mailchimp, iContact, GetResponse, Prosender, Emailaces, Turbo Autoresponders, Google FeedBurner… or your own service. WPSubscribers is designed to work with all major web browsers.

Interactive World Maps

This is a WordPress plugin to create as many maps as you want, with interactive and colored markers, continents, countries or regions. A map of the entire world.

Create maps of a continent or a sub-continent. (Africa, Europe, Americas, Asia, Oceania and all their sub-continents).

Create a map of a country. (virtually all the countries in the world are included, featuring the most requested: USA, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, India, Australia…).  or a map of a country divided by its regions. Even a state in the United States.

If your in need of a map (and especially an interactive one) this is the plugin you should check out.

Live Chat

Chat with your customers on your site for sales and support easily, and beautifully. Here’s a few features that make this really stand out.

It has a One-time fee. You can create your own operators and it includes chat logs. Not only that more than one operator can reply the same user’s question. Also, visitors can fill out contact form when all operators are offline.

If your looking for a lightweight and easy to use chat plugin this is the one to check out.

Vector Icons

A new, fast and easy way to add beautiful, retina ready icons to your site!

Vector Icons for WordPress is a new way to include icons to your site. No more need to customize image or psd files, now all is done in your WordPress editor.

This is made possible by combining awesome iconic vector fonts with 900+ icons and beautiful icon panel. Icons are retina and high definition ready and will look crisp in any definition. Icons can be any color and any size, with predefined or custom effects and are great for any purpose.

Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is hands down the best contact form plugin for WordPress. Build and publish your WordPress forms in just minutes. No drudgery, just quick and easy form-building. Select your fields, configure your options and easily embed forms on your WordPress powered site using the built-in tools.

Building simple and complex forms alike is a piece of cake with the easy to use form editor. Make long forms easier to use by breaking them up into multiple pages, complete with progress bar. Gravity Forms makes it easy to create order forms with product, option, shipping and total calculations. Configure your form to show or hide fields, sections, pages or even the submit button based on user selections.

Gravity Forms allows you to quickly and easily integrate with a variety of third party services such as PayPal and provides for even deeper integration with WordPress through our collection of optional Add-Ons. Hot stuff!

Attention Grabber

attentionGrabber is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to add a notification bar to your website.

With this plugin you can easily display custom text, Twitter posts and Feeds RSS. Also, the huge list of features lets you fully customize the notifications look. AttentionGrabber is a simple but effective solution to market your products and share contents through your website.

Updates Will Be Listed Here

No updates yet, but comment down below if you think we missed a plugin that ROCKS!

I usually answer the question in one of two ways. First, if you consume content throughout the day then curation is just an easy additional step to your normal activities. If you aren’t fortunate to be able to do that then I suggest you create a process and a series of what we call listening posts.

Below I describe how to set up a content curation listening post  using RSS feeds.

It’s a short presentation but I answer a few things:

• How do you find similar sites?
• What addons or plugins can you use to save you time?
• Should you use Google Reader?
• The additional tool to  use on top of Google Reader to make finding content a breeze.

Here’s the RSS Feeds and Content Curation presentation:

From content marketing, social media, networking, sales, and all the other things that take up time… Really, how do you get all this stuff done when you have a job, clients, a business to run, or live a busy life with family and friends?

While there’s no magic formula that works for everybody I’ve had success by following 3 steps I outline below:

Step 1 – Decide What You Are Trying to Accomplish

This is critical, here you need to decide why you are doing these daily activities. Are they increasing  your business?

Are you getting results for you efforts or do you expect results? If you expect results, how do you know this– did someone tell you or are you mimicking what others are doing?

Just a few questions to make sure your focused on results. Here are some specific examples:

If you’re a small business with regional or local based customers is the content your creating and engagement of social media driving sales or retaining customers?

If you are a real estate agent, is creating local content for your city going to get you more listings, more leads, and more buyers?

If you’re in a home based business, is this going to provide more prospects, more people purchasing your funded proposal, and more opportunities?

Step 2 – Document Your Steps

Yes, I know more work. I hate this step. In fact, I hate it so much it used to be the last thing I did. I’ve since turned the corner on this and learned that this is the key to building successful business and the key to the next step.

When you document your process you immediately start seeing ways to improve. When I documented how I create free training for instance, I figured out the true order I should be creating things. This made me much more proficient when I sat down and actually created our free training. See the process below:

Description

The procedures for releasing free training on You Brand.

Resources Required

• Finished TRAINING CONTENT (video, text, or documents)
• S3 Account
• Domain.com
• Base Training post Template
• Base Email Template
• Aweber

Directions

1. Upload TRAINING CONTENT to S3, under FREE.
   1. Create or choose the appropriate bucket for training to be located (example: if the training is on facebook, put the training in FREE/TRAINING-SUBNAME/NEW BUCKET NAME)
2. Edit ACL, to Everyone, READ, apply to subfolders
3. Open up Base Post template, CREATE and RELEASE post on DOMAIN.
   1. Category (Free-Training)
   2. Tag (items supplied)
   3. Test VIDEO and any supporting LINKS and DOCUMENTS for TRAINING CONTENT
4. Open up base email template, create email message
5. Proof read email message
6. Go to Aweber 1, schedule Email in appropriate campaigns for TRAINING
7. Put in CONTENT Re-Purpose Schedule
8. Notify Creator of Content

Another tip here, document everything you do. This will help you decide what is critical that you take do and what you can move to Step 3.

Step 3 – Give to Someone Else

Yes, I’m talking about outsourcing. You are the one with the vision, your time is valuable.

Your end goal is here. You want to create an effective process and document it so someone can begin doing these things for you.

You’re goal should be to get to this step as fast as possible. When you get here the things you can accomplish become greater.

Without Step 1 and Step 2 you cannot outsource, otherwise you will waste money, time, and become frustrated.

I’ve been outsourcing for a number of years and I am looking to expand even more.

Here are places I’ve had success finding good people for outsourcing:

• http://www.taskseveryday.com/
• http://www.getafreelancer.com
• http://www.Odesk.com

Even if you hire someone local without documentation you end up creating another job for yourself when you hire.

This post could easily go on and on about how to outsource but I’ll leave you with these tips:

• Start slow (if I didn’t have experience in outsourcing I’d start with JUST the above procedure)
• Focus on results
• If it doesn’t feel right with the person you are outsourcing too, stop immediately, figure out why you aren’t comfortable and find someone else based on what you’ve learned.
• As a good start get the book 4 Hour Work Week from Tim Ferris (this changed my thoughts years ago)

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about outsourcing.

If You ARE or Aren’t Outsourcing Leave a COMMENT below on WHY…

Image by koalazymonkey

We make many decisions based on our own assumptions. If your like most people your daily actions are driven by these assumptions.

Now more than ever it is important to continually question what you assume.

Are You Testing Yourself?

Assumptions are not bad but they do need to be kept in check. Many of the breakthroughs in science and business came from testing what everybody assumed.

It was assumed that there were only 109 Elements in the Period Table… since 1994, six new elements have been discovered.




Here is a list of some business assumptions that you should check often:

• Everyone will love my product/service as much as I do.
• A good product/service will sell itself. …or… If I build it, they will come and buy it.
• In this business, I must purchase (build, own, have rent, show, etc.) _______________.
• My competitors have ______________; therefore I must also.
• My customers expect me to have ___________________.

Operating daily on false realities without the benefit of reality testing is a recipe for failure.

How to Test Assumptions

Look to see what has worked. Do a thought exercise and take what you are doing to the conclusion. Do you have numbers or proof that these assumptions are true?

Here is an example. Everyday you get up and you login to Facebook and Twitter. You check your messages and you maybe send a few messages back to some people. Now you assume this is great time spent but if I asked you right now how many leads or prospects  you received from these efforts could you tell me? Many people could not.  I’m not talking about a guess, I would want an exact number.

The key assumption here is that if you continue down some path you are expecting some result. Although right now you probably have enough data and experience to make an assessment. Often times people wait too long to make an assessment on thier assumptions.

Assumptions cloud our judgment and allow us to stay in that comfortable spot. It’s time you start to challenge these daily. Tear them apart and take what you are doing today to the conclusion. Did it end how you assumed?

Bonus Assumption…

It’s important that I not make mistakes.

Wrong! It’s important that you not continue to make the same mistakes — that you identify your mistakes early and “correct” them (i.e., try a different approach) before they become costly mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. In fact, you want to make mistakes. You learn more from your mistakes — than from your successes. By not making mistakes, you’re have no way to gain “opportunity loss” — which can be just as detrimental to your business as any cash flow or core financial problem.