The OSP

Is your website hurting sales? 5 Keys to creating a website that SELLS!

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:00:13 +0000

Your business website is essentially your storefront, business card and most significant marketing piece all rolled into one. How it affects your visitors and customers is then essential to your success. Provide a memorable experience and customers are sure to return time and time again. Let’s take a look at five keys to creating a [...]

Create Headlines that SELL!

Jodie Burdette — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:55:15 +0000

You have mere seconds to capture a prospect’s attention. One of the single most powerful tools you have to accomplish this task is your headline. There are several keys to a compelling, and selling, headline and a few tips to help you get the job done. #1 Tap into Your Prospects’ Emotions According to [...]

5 Quick and Dirty SEO Tricks

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:55:07 +0000

Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors you have, the better your sales and profits. Presumably you have a niche and you know your keywords, and regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what’s popular. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and [...]

How to Find Guest Blogging Opportunities

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:55:19 +0000

There are a number of ways to find guest blogging opportunities and this guide will provide you an illustrated tour of how you can get great exposure through guest posting. Whether you search for blogs that publicly accept submissions, approach blogs directly, use a guest blogging site or a combination of all those methods, there [...]

7 Reasons Why You Need To Start Guest Blogging

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 12:55:54 +0000

Did you know that Google has reworked their top secret page ranking algorithm? One of the biggest changes has been the down grading of links to article marketing sites. Guest blogging is now the best way to build back links to your site. Good Back Links = Improved Google Ranking Here are 7 of the [...]

10 Reasons Why A Facebook Fan Page Is So Important

Jodie Burdette — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:03:23 +0000

Facebook is the latest rage online to communicate with your readers at a whole new level. Even a few months back we could say that Facebook fan pages were not very popular, but now it has become a necessity to have a Facebook page. It is an awesome social media tool with viral capabilities much [...]

Encourage Return Traffic: Super Charge The Facebook Like Button

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 12:55:57 +0000

Facebook Like buttons are everywhere. They are a great tool for sharing interesting information with your “friends”. They are also a great way to get your blog posts in front of more eyes. Up until now this ubiquitous button has represented a onetime sharing event. Well not any more. There is a new Like button [...]

Creating Buzz – Make your Facebook Fan Page into an EXPERIENCE

Jodie Burdette — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:55:43 +0000

You business has a Facebook Fan page but now you are looking for (low-cost) ways make your page stand out of the zillions of others out there. A great way to make your business shine is to create a “Facebook Experience”. Host a Facebook page that is unique to your brand and relevant and valuable [...]

Cloud:Flood – Create buzz, drive traffic and it’s FREE

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 12:55:29 +0000

I found a really nifty new tool this week. It’s free, you don’t have to sign up AND it will both create buzz and drive traffic to your site. It’s call Cloud:Flood. All you need to do is have a promotional product that you’d like to giveaway such as an eBook, MP3, Zip etc. People [...]

Leveraging Your Blog – Turning First Time Commenters Into Long Term Readers

Jodie Burdette — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:00:01 +0000

You know all about the funnel method of upselling. But have you ever applied that model to your blogging efforts? If you haven’t then you probably aren’t leveraging as effectively as you could be. Here is a very simple illustration of the funnel method as it applies to blogging. At the very top are your [...]

Facebook Fan Page Changes Explained

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:55:15 +0000

On March 10th Facebook rolled out a major change to its Pages in order to bring them closer in look and functionality to individual user profiles. For the most part I am really liking (pun intended) the change as it will really improve your ability to connect with your audience. The most obvious changes are [...]

Yes you can transfer ownership of a Facebook Fan Page

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 14:00:21 +0000

I was recently asked how someone could transfer ownership of a fan page they created to someone else. This person no longer wanted a personal profile but they did want to retain the business page and the large group of fans they had painstakingly built up. Thankfully Facebook has (finally!) made this very easy to [...]

Turbo Boost Your Comments – Build a Community

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 13:00:40 +0000

The folks behind Disqus are brilliant. They have taken the concept of leaving comments, souped it up, tricked it out and turned it into a lean mean community building machine. This is truly one of the most perfectly designed plugins I have ever used. It is easy to install, easy to manage and makes starting [...]

Hidden XP Tool : Create Your Own Font or Special Characters

Jodie Burdette — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:02:18 +0000

Have you ever wanted to create your own font? How about a special custom character - for example, a character showing your initials that you can use when you approve documents with your “signature”? There is a hidden tool in Windows XP called the Private Character Editor that will let you easily create your own [...]

Separate First And Last Names Into Two Columns In Excel

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:05:07 +0000

Inevitably, when you import information into Excel you will need to separate a cell’s contents into two columns. Let’s say you have imported a list of addresses but you need to separate the first and last names so you can use them in a mail merge letter. Step 1: Highlight the cells containing the information [...]

Make Office’s Spell Checker Ignore Internet Addresses

Jodie Burdette — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 04:00:30 +0000

I don’t know about you but sometimes spell check drives me crazy!! As a web designer it is rare that I type a document that doesn’t include a web address somewhere. And there goes spell checker underlining each one with that annoying red sqiggle, even in my email (Outlook) and password logs (Excel)! Well no [...]

10 Little Known MS Word Tricks

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 04:03:15 +0000

Move Table Rows Up Or Down This tip is probably most useful when you’re working in a table, although you can use it to reorder paragraphs outside a table, too. Let’s say you decide you want the third row of a table to be the top row. Just click within the third row, hold down [...]

Is Your Computer Back Up Plan Fool Proof?

Jodie Burdette — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:57:05 +0000

I don’t know about you but around my house (and in my business) my computer has become as indispensable as the kitchen sink, microwave popcorn or ice cubes. I use it for everything from running my web design/web tech business to keeping in touch with my friends and family. It sounds clique but my entire [...]

Need A Free Alternative to PhotoShop? Here you go!

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:43:58 +0000

GIMP is not Adobe Photoshop CS4, but it is an amazingly powerful and efficient open-source bitmap-editing package that can look just as confusing as Adobe Photoshop CS4if you open all its floating toolbars and sidebars. You’ll need to get used to its nonstandard menus. If you make your living from graphics or photo editing, you’ll [...]

Make Your Website More Interactive

Jodie Burdette — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:00:23 +0000

Making your site more interactive can increase the number of visitors who return and who tell others about your site. In other words you want to give you visitor’s reasons to keep coming back again and again. First and foremost content is king. You must have good, informative content or all the window dressing in [...]

Convert Audio Rip CDs and More

Jodie Burdette — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:38:50 +0000

Here are two good (and of course free) options for manipulating audio files. dBpowerAMP lets you rip CDs, convert files, and record audio. It supports MP3, MP4, M4a, WMA, OGG, AAC, APE, FLAC, Apple Lossless, and more. This app integrates with Windows, so you can simply right-click on a file to convert it. Get it here: www.dbpoweramp.com [...]

Need to Edit Audio? You need Audacity!

Jodie Burdette — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:36:18 +0000

Audacity is a powerful audio editing/recording software package that doesn’t require much training. It works on Linux, Mac and Windows, and it handles many file types, including OGG, MP3, AIFF, AU, and WAV (but not WMA or AAC). Its features include 32-bit/96-KHz recording and editing (up to 16 channels), independent speed and pitch control, noise [...]

A Sleak Alternative to Adobe Reader Bloat

Jodie Burdette — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:16:45 +0000

Anyone who has used Adobe Reader knows it is a huge resource hog. On a older system or one with limited resources AR can slow you to a crawl or stop you altogether (actually this true of every Adobe product I have ever used!!!). Well here is a sweet, sleek alternative: Foxit Reader www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php It [...]

Convert Any File To A PDF – For FREE

Jodie Burdette — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:00:08 +0000

Today I am going to tell you about my favorite FREE PDF convertor – CutePDF. In spite of the sugary name it is an excellent piece of software and it is super easy to use – if you can print you can make a PDF. I especially like the fact that you can create a PDF from virtually any [...]

Why Website Builders Are Bad For Your Biz

Jodie Burdette — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:00:48 +0000

Over the last year I have had quite a few businesses come to me to make changes or updates to sites that had been built with one of the many website building systems available. In every single case we had to start over and rebuild their site from scratch. In each case it was due [...]