The WordPress plugins you choose can significantly impact whether you succeed or fail online.

If you’re a blogger, you are probably very familiar with WordPress .  You may even use WordPress Themes in your website.

But do you know how much power and functionality you can get from your website by using certain key WordPress plugins?

Plugins are like lawyers.  A good one, like the Corleone family had, will make you an offer you can’t refuse.  A bad one will make you an offer you can’t understand.

Here is a comprehensive guide to the must-have free and premium WordPress plugins that will help you get results that matter.

Utility Tools

1. Jetpack

This should be one of the first WordPress plugins everyone installs. Jetpack allows you to host your own blog and retain complete control over your site while you still enjoy the cloud benefits that the WordPress hosted service offers.

There are eight features that come with the initial install. These include:

Hovercards – This plugin by Gravatar shows a pop-up business card of users’ Gravatar profiles when they comment on your WordPress site.

Stats – This plugin gives you stats from WordPress.com with no additional load on your server.

After the Deadline – This plugin adds spelling, style and grammar checks by WordPress.

Twitter Widget – This plugin displays the latest updates from Twitter right inside your WordPress theme.

Shortcodes – This plugin embeds videos and more from sites like Vimeo, YouTube, SlideShare, etc.

Shortlinks – This plugin enables WP.me powered shortlinks that enable easier sharing on sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social platforms.

Sharedaddy – This plug-in makes it extremely easy to share posts on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else on the net.

Latex – This plug-in will mark up posts with Latex markup language. This works well for complex mathematical equations.

Below you will find a video tour of this plugin.

Search Engine Optimization

2. WordPress SEO by Yoast

Yoast is an authority on WordPress and website optimization.  His WordPress SEO plugin is widely recognized as the most comprehensive and complete SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.  It features meta and title tag control, xml site map, custom breadcrumbs, rss header and footer link templates, snippet previews, social integration, page analysis (to optimize your on page content) and much more.

Rich Snippet Preview

On Page Optimization

You can watch a video below on how to set up and configure the  WordPress SEO Plugin

3. SEO Friendly Images

SEO Friendly Images is a WordPress SEO plugin which automatically updates all images with proper ALT and TITLE attributes for SEO purposes. If your images do not have ALT and TITLE already embedded, SEO Friendly Images will add them according the options you set.

 4. WP Smush.it

This WordPress plugin will automatically shrink the images you upload. The reduction in image size is significant.

5. SEO Slugs

The SEO Slugs WordPress plugin removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve search engine optimization.

For example, when you publish a post with a title like this:

“How to use Facebook Ads to Find Customers”,

WordPress automatically assigns a long filename to your post, called a post slug:

/how-to-use-facebook-ads-to-find-customers

SEO Slugs plugin strips common words like “what”, “you” or “can” out of your post slug to make it more search engine friendly. With SEO Slugs plugin activated, the slug for our example blog post would look like this:

/facebook-ads-find-customers

The slug is generated on saving a post (so you get a chance to look at it before publishing, and change it), or on publish. It won’t overwrite an existing slug. You can force a new slug generation by deleting the existing one.

6. SEO Smart Links

7. Dagon Site Map Generator

This WordPress plugin creates a sitemap for your WordPress-powered site. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. Some of its features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more.

8. Broken Link Checker

Don’t let broken links sink your site.  This WordPress plugin will monitor your blog for broken internal and external links and let you know if any are found.

9. SEO Scribe

If boosting your blog’s search engine optimization is on the agenda, you’ll want to check out the Scribe SEO Plugin.  This plugin was created by Brian Clark who is widely recognized as one of the most influential bloggers online.

Scribe is one of several applications that helps companies optimize their blog content, choose effective keywords, and increase targeted traffic.  It helps you save time, understand your readers and create content that search engines will love.  Scribe focuses on three components:

• Keywords:  Shows the language style searchers use before you begin to write. Once your content is created, Scribe reveals other profitable keywords you might have missed.
• Content:  Analyzes natural, reader-focused content and tells you how to gently tweak it to spoon feed search engines based on 15 SEO best practices.
• Links:  Helps build back links, crosslink the content within your own site, and identify influential social media users who want to share your content.  

As part of your subscription, you also get Scribe Web plus integrated versions of Scribe for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. The company also offers free educational seminars to help users more effectively leverage its application.

Scribe users report good results using the tool, with some customers reporting blog traffic increases of 25 percent or more within a few months of installing the software.

Spam Protection

10. Akismet

This is a great WordPress Plugin that checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.

Google Analytics

11. Google Analytics for WordPress

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin allows you to track and analyze your website and blog traffic statistics.

Mobile Website

12. WP Touch PRO

With so many mobile users accessing the Internet on the fly, it’s becoming increasingly important to have a website that’s optimized for use by cell phones, PDAs, and tablets.

Thankfully, the process of creating a mobile-friendly WordPress site is now a lot easier with WPTouch Pro—a WordPress plugin you can use to instantly develop mobile and tablet-optimized websites.

WPtouch Pro works by detecting supported devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry. Once a device is detected, the plugin optimizes the theme to accommodate the mobile user, making your website easy to read and navigate on a variety of devices.

WPTouch Pro is versatile

Users also have the option to view your site’s regular desktop theme by simply clicking the “full site” option on the screen.

The plugin creates a full-fledged mobile theme, completely separate from your site’s desktop theme, which offers most of the WordPress native features and works with other plugins.

While the free version of WPtouch is great, the Pro version includes more features and comes with customer support and free upgrades through all 2.x version releases.

It is easy to learn.

You don’t have to be a website designer or blog developer to effectively use WPTouch Pro. Once it’s installed, even the most novice WordPress administrator can customize the look and feel of their blog with backgrounds, font colors, font sizes, and other elements.

And while the Wptouch Pro Software Plugin includes pre-set color schemes and a large number of pre-installed icons, it’s also easy to customize.

Features you’ll want to explore in WPtouch Pro include the ability to:

• Create a custom menu and assign it to your mobile theme

• Select fonts and colors

• Upload your company logo

• Upload a custom background

• Embed both images and video with just a few lines of HTML code

• Incorporate your AdSense campaign and other advertising network scripts into your mobile site

Using WPTouch Pro is straightforward.

After installing and activating the plugin, you’ll use the “General Settings” tab to fill in some basic information.

Next, you’ll set your site’s fonts, colors, and backgrounds (under the “Theme” tab), and create a custom “mobile” menu. You can then create special sections for any content you may not have translated well to the preset mobile theme.

With this valuable tool, you can easily turn your professional website into one that mobile users can access from any type of device—whether it’s a Blackberry, a Droid, or an iPad.

Below you will find a video on how to configure this plugin.

Optimization

13. W3 Total Cache

This is the best caching plugin for WordPress. It significantly improves the user experience on your site by reducing download times and caching every aspect of your site.  It also combines very well with MaxCDN, the content delivery network we use here at CORE.

You may watch a video below on how to set it up.

Backup

14. Backup Buddy

Backup buddy is the only WordPress plugin that can efficiently handle both file and database backups.

Below you will find an installation and set up video for this plugin.

15. PressBackup

This WordPress plugin is a cloud-based solution to simplify the act of backing up and preserving your website data.

Posts

16. Editorial Calendar

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 editorial calendar.

17. Landing Sites

When visitors are referred to your site from a search engine, this WordPress plugin shows them related posts to their search on your blog.

18. Popular Posts

This WordPress plugin displays a list of your blog’s most-viewed posts.

19. Yet Another Related Posts

This WordPress plugin displays a list of contextually related posts at the end of an article.

Social

20. BuddyPress

This is the best WordPress social network plugin to start an online community.

View an overview of this plugin below.

21. Facebook Share

The Facebook Share (new) button easily allows your blog to be shared. The button also provides a current count of how many times your story has been shared throughout Facebook.

22. Tweet Old Posts

The primary function of this Tweet Old Posts is to promote older blog posts by tweeting about them and getting more traffic. This plugin randomly picks your older posts based on the interval specified by you.

23. Sharebar

Sharebar adds a dynamic and fully customizable vertical box to the left of a blog post that contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites.

24. Sociable

This is one of the most popular social sharing plugins.

25. TweetMeme

TweetMeme is the single best plugin to integrate Twitter into your Blog.  It allows you to quickly share and analyze your blog posts.

26. Twounter

Twounter returns the number of twitter followers in a plain text format.

Photos and Images

27. NextGEN Gallery

NextGEN Gallery is a fully integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a slideshow option.

The video tutorial below demonstrates how to install and set up this plugin.

Forms

28. Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can easily customize forms and mail content with the simple markup feature. The plugin supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering

Pinging

29. cbnet Ping Optimizer

Save your blog from getting tagged as a ping spammer by installing this WordPress plugin.

Monetization

30. Amazon Affiliate Link Localizer

This WordPress plugin not only automatically changes any Amazon link on your site to use your affiliate ID, but it also changes the link to point to the user’s local Amazon store.

You can improve your entire organization with one thing. Trust.

You build it by demonstrating concern for, and commitment to, the well-being of your employees and your customers.

Leaders like Tony Hsieh of Zappos do this consistently, which is why the company he founded is ranked near the top of the list of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies to Work For.”

Not only does Zappos provide employees with free lunches and all-you-can-eat vending machine fare, but Hsieh asks for and values employee ideas.

He rewards hard work, loyalty, and risk-taking. And he’s not afraid to take the blame when something goes wrong, shielding those who work for him.

Take the 2010 online pricing disaster, for example.

Due to a technical glitch, all the shoes at sister website 6pm.com were priced at $49.99 for a number of hours. During that time, customers snapped up unbelievable bargains, given that some of the site’s shoes sell for as much as $1,000.

When the problem was discovered, Hsieh took to social media to alert customers to the error and to apologize for any inconvenience when the prices were reset at their correct values. Then he proceeded to honor all of the orders that had been taken, suffering a $1.6 million loss in the process.

More importantly, he showed his customers and his employees that he is a man of his word. That he is trust-worthy.

That is the key in your company, too. You earn trust by doing what you promise and living up to your own standards. It’s that simple.

Trust=Higher ROI

The level of trust that exists within your organization affects everything. From the CEO’s office to the loading dock, every performance and every outcome is dictated by trust.

There’s a direct correlation between trust and performance. According to a Watson Wyatt study, “Three-year total returns to shareholders (TRS) rates are significantly higher at companies with high trust levels, clear linkages between jobs and objectives, and employees who believe the company manages change well.”

Conversely, low trust levels lead to second-guessing on every communication, transaction, strategy and decision. With that, the cost of doing business and the time it takes to get things done escalate.

Building Trust

Trust is earned over time through consistency of thought, word, and deed. By living up to your stated commitments, taking action where action is needed, you earn the respect and trust of those around you.

In a business, trust is also built through positive results.

By achieving set objectives – from reaching sales goals, to improving satisfaction ratings, or reducing employee turnover – you prove your abilities as a leader. And, in truth, anyone can be a leader.

Titles like owner, manager, or director do not make leaders. Action does.

Measuring Trust

Although it seems intangible, trust can actually be measured across six factors.

How well do you score on these?

• Follow-through: Do you and your staff live up to commitments made? Do you do what you say you will do within an agreed-upon time frame? Failing to follow promises with action damages trust.

• Share information freely: Do you keep your team informed and up-to-date? People who withhold information are deemed untrustworthy.

• Predictable behavior: Is your behavior consistent and encouraging? Aggressive or inconsistent behavior erases trust quickly.

• Feedback: Do you provide regular and fair performance feedback? When employees know how they are doing and see managers invested in their success, trust soars. And when feedback is lacking, even if positive, employees question their role and relative importance.

• Gossip: Do you share information broadly in order to help your team succeed? Or do you engage in behind-the-scenes conversations about individual employees? When the grapevine and gossip are your leading communication vehicles, trust cannot grow.

• Open door policy: Do you encourage employees to come to you with problems? Allowing workers to ask for guidance and feedback without negative repercussions builds gratitude, loyalty, and trust.

Return the Favor

Effective leaders don’t simply inspire trust; they trust their employees as well.

Your staff is very tuned in to the trust you place in them. A feeling of trust enhances performance and increases the sense of responsibility and buy-in to the end result.

The more you trust them, the more they’ll trust you, and you’ll be creating a high-trust organization… the type that enjoys high morale, high performance and incredible results.

Do you think trust is the most important quality for a leader?

If boosting your blog’s search engine optimization is on the agenda, you’ll want to check out Scribe SEO Plugin Software.

As one of several applications that helps companies optimize their blog content, choose effective keywords, and increase targeted traffic, Scribe focuses on three components:

• Keywords:  Scribe shows you the language searchers use before you begin to write. Once your content is created, Scribe reveals other profitable keywords.
• Content:  Scribe analyzes your natural, reader-focused content and tells you how to gently tweak it to spoon feed search engines based on 15 SEO best practices.
• Links:  Scribe helps you build back links, crosslink the content within your own site, and identify influential social media users who want to share your stuff.

Scribe helps you understand your readers.

Beginning with keyword identification, Scribe helps you understand the language that your target readers are using when they search for the kind of content that you’re providing.

The application also helps you better understand that language, and it assists in developing compelling content that readers will turn to time and time again.

The Scribe keyword research tool saves time.

Scribe helps you come up with the right language before you start writing, and once your content is created, the Scribe keyword suggestion service shows you keyword phrases you might have missed.

It also analyzes your natural, reader-focused content and tells you how to gently hone it for search engine optimization.

Scribe gives you link-building tools.

Finally, Scribe’s link-building tools save you time and energy in building back links from other sites, crosslinking your own site’s content, and identifying active, influential social media users who will likely want to share your content.

As part of your subscription, you also get Scribe Web plus integrated versions of Scribe for WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. The company also offers free educational seminars to help users more effectively leverage its application.

Scribe users report good results using the tool, with some customers reporting blog traffic increases of 25 percent or more within a few months of installing the software.

“Not only has the blog traffic to my site increased when using Scribe,” another user writes, “but those posts I had created with it continue to get better traffic than the newer ones I created without it.”

Rock stars and sports teams live and die by their fans, and your business is no different.

No fans, no performances; empty stadiums, empty bank account. Today, rock stars in all industries rely on social media to build relationships with fans.

No matter what you may think of social media, you can’t ignore it. Leading social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become branding forces. They can shape and support your brand, for better or worse. Ignore them and you’ll be left in the dust.

Embrace social media and the sky’s the limit. Just look at Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber – the two most-followed musicians on Twitter. Gaga just passed 19 million followers, and Bieber is right behind her, at 17 million.

Reacting to bad reviews

Your customers now have a public voice about your business, and they’re using it.

Virgin America learned that the hard way when one disgruntled passenger recorded and uploaded the experience of being stuck on the ground in the aircraft due to a weather delay. Another passenger continued to update her Facebook status with her complaints: “Aren’t there laws about this? VA gets a big thumbs down today.”

The airline certainly couldn’t control what the passengers posted any more than they could control the weather.

What they could control was the company’s treatment of passengers who were forced to endure the 16-hour trip, which ultimately involved both air and bus transit. And what passengers complained most about was the treatment they received from the flight attendants during the ordeal.

Multiple passenger social media reports painted a picture of an uncaring airline. And accurate or not, perception became reality for Virgin America.

Virgin America CEO, David Cush, was tasked with turning the situation around. He started by sending an apology letter to every passenger, with the promise of a full refund and future credit. He called the passenger who filmed the flight. He publicly took full responsibility.

Whether his actions were enough to repair the damage done to the brand is hard to say. However, the woman who’d posted her complaints to Facebook followed up with a post thanking the airline for its resolution and claiming she’d continue to be a loyal passenger.

Be part of the conversation

The lesson? Your customers are already talking about you. They’re sharing good and bad experiences.

Once you become part of the conversation, you have the opportunity to shape how people perceive your company. How you react to kudos and complaints will affect what else is said about you.

Your customers are also watching you and may be recording the interaction. To avoid becoming a YouTube sensation for the wrong reasons, make certain your employees put patience and stellar customer service at the top of their priority lists.

It’s good business with or without social media.

Nipping negativity in the bud

Some companies have even become proactive in an attempt to maintain a positive brand image. Comcast, for example, has taken a different approach to managing its reputation online. Embracing Twitter, Comcast developed @comcastcares to help customers in need.

Spurred by a customer who started a website ComcastMustDie.com, Comcast recognized the first step to turning negative feedback around was admitting the customer experience they were providing wasn’t always good. The second was changing the corporate culture, by focusing on improving customer satisfaction.

To do that, Comcast’s employees aren’t just waiting for unhappy customers to find them. They have become very adept at trolling for problems and negative comments shared on social media sites. When they find one, they reach out to learn how they can turn a complaint into a positive experience.

Monitor – It matters

The lesson? Learn to monitor what’s being said about your company on the Internet. Set up alerts, like Google Alerts, to stay dialed in. You can create alerts for your company’s name (and your own name), and you will be notified via email according to the parameters you create (by occurrence, daily, weekly, etc.).

Additionally, you may opt for professional help to monitor and manage your online reputation. Companies like Yextrep monitor social media and review sites on your behalf and deliver results in real time to a customized dashboard.

By staying on top of customer feedback, you have the capability to better manage your brand reputation. Listening, taking action, and confirming the customer received the resolution they wanted is sometimes all that is needed to earn a lifetime fan.

Building your fan base

Focus on your core competencies and deliver a rock solid product or service, as Whole Foods does by selling organic and all-natural groceries.

Offer value at every turn, just as LL Bean does with its lifetime product guarantee and free shipping for LL Bean credit card holders.

Open a dialog with your fans on social media; ask what they like. Ask what they don’t like. Listen. Starbucks solicited ideas from customers and ended up creating a number of products and promotions, such as the Starbuck K-cup line.

Get personal – let your fans know there are real people just like them behind the face of your business. Zappos employees regularly converse with customers via Twitter.

Brand building is based on two-way communication and interaction. Fans love when their sports stars take time to sign a few autographs and when rock stars sing the requested encores. Today that two-way communication is made even easier through social media sites.

Treat your customers right, both online and off, and you’ve taken a giant step to turning them into raving fans.

What kind of branding strategies do you use to create loyal fans?

Building a strong personal brand is an essential strategy if you want to set yourself apart from your competitors.

The purpose of your personal brand is to establish you as an individual and let the rest of the world know who you are and what you’re about.

Follow these six steps to personal branding success:

1. Set goals.

Consider how you’d like others to see you and speak about you.

Look at what your brand communicates now and what you want it to look like in the future, and create a roadmap that will help you get there. If, for example, you want to be thought of as a successful inventor—but you haven’t told anyone about your latest inventions—then it’s time to focus on that exciting part of your career.

2. Approach branding with passion.

It’s time to tap into your passion for what you do.

Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and talk about your achievements. Throw in a few failures and future goals, while you’re at it, because these are humanizing and a great way to help people relate to you.

3. Define your uniqueness.

Coca-Cola and Dell didn’t become brand behemoths by going with the flow and copying others.

Look at what unique values and attributes you bring to the table and capitalize on them when creating your personal brand. What sets you apart? Why are you different? What makes you special?

The answers to these questions will help you lay out the framework for your branding strategy.

4. Give your personal brand a purpose.

Your personal brand should be associated with helping others solve a problem or tackle a challenge.

For example, if your online travel agency specializes in cruise vacations, then establish yourself as the “go to” person for cruise information—good, bad and otherwise. That way, people will think of you first when it comes time to book a trip.

5. Shape your personal brand around your target audience.

Let’s say you’re an experienced CEO who was laid off during the economic downturn. You’re ready to get back into the job market, and you need to position yourself as an employable, reliable executive who had a bad turn of luck.

Keep your future employer in mind as you craft your personal brand by asking yourself questions like: What do they want to know about me? What are they looking for in a new executive? What are they not looking for?

And finally, how can I fill those needs with my own experience and knowledge?

6. Stick with your personal brand.

Changing your personal brand drastically every few months is a bad idea.

That’s not to say you can’t tweak it and improve on it, but doing a complete 180-degree switch midstream will only confuse people or make them think you’re a bit wishy-washy. Stick with what works, adjust as needed, and focus on maintaining a strong personal brand that withstands time.

Your personal brand is one of the most important assets you have, and creating a stronger one is key to your career goals and objectives.

By using the tips we’ve outlined here, you’ll be better equipped to build an effective personal brand for today and for the future.

What techniques and strategies have you used to create a strong personal brand?

Having a powerful personal brand can mean the difference between being “known” in your industry and wallowing in it for years, wondering why your phone is quiet and your client pipeline is empty.

The good news is that with a bit of elbow grease and creativity, you can bolster your personal brand in ways that make people stand up and take notice.

It won’t happen overnight, but by following these six easy steps, you can get your personal brand on the track to success:

1. Establish yourself as a helpful expert first, and then try to make the sale.

Even the most successful executives “give away” information in order to keep themselves at the top of the game.

Whether you’re connecting someone to an important source, showing someone how to get the job done right, or giving out lists of the top business books you’ve read, these moves will help establish you as an expert in your field, and it will go a long way in helping you build your personal brand.

2. Pay attention to the competition, but don’t dwell on it.

When you’re building your brand, you’ll want to look around at what others are doing but not to the point that you become the next “copycat.”

Borrow their best qualities and learn from their successes and failures. You can then use that information to create your own unique brand.

3. Focus on gaining trust.

The Internet is a hotbed for untrustworthy individuals who are trying to make a fast buck.

If the online space is your primary focus, be sure to position yourself as the trusted, responsible product or service provider who gets the job done right, every time. This trust will be crucial both online and offline, but it’s particularly important when doing business on the Web.

4. Be credible and reliable.

It doesn’t take long for a disgruntled customer or business partner to spread negative comments and feedback in the online world.

By meeting your obligations, delivering on your promises, and operating like an upstanding businessperson, your brand will literally build itself.

5. Allow people to connect with you and your brand.

People do business with people whom they know, love, and trust. They don’t do business with companies, labels, products, or brands.

That’s why it’s important to incorporate your own personality into your personal branding strategies. Include photos on your communications, use a “business casual” approach when emailing customers, and always answer the phone personally. This will help your brand seem more “real” to customers and business partners.

6. Share information like it’s going out of style.

Whether you’re publishing short ebooks, writing up industry reports, or simply blogging, part of building your personal brand includes sharing information with people.

Become the “go-to” guy or gal for information and, before you know it, your personal brand will stand out in their minds and will be remembered when the time comes that they need your product or services.

What tools and strategies do you use to promote your personal brand?

Advertising on Facebook is a great way to find new customers and start marketing your products and services to them.

Facebook ads are situated on the right-hand side of a viewer’s computer screen. Some promote local businesses, while others advertise fan pages that might be of interest to the specific user.

To make sure your company’s ads are seen and clicked through by prospective customers, follow these five steps:

1. Educate yourself on the site’s advertising approach.

With Facebook, you’ll be advertising to individuals based on their demographics including age, education, and interests.

This marketing approach will play an important role in the creation of your ads, all of which will be placed in front of potential customers who aren’t necessarily thinking about your firm and its products or services (unlike Google advertising, which is based on the specific search performed by the user).

2. Picture your target customer.

Get an idea of your potential customer including his or her age, education level, interests, and income. This simple exercise will help you shape your Facebook ads in a way that reaches your target audience.

3. Come up with an attractive offer for your target customer.

Your goal as a Facebook advertiser is to get people to click on your ad.

To get them to do this, you’ll need to make an offer that your audience is interested in. Make this offer—not your company’s name and tagline—the focal point of your Facebook ads.

You can use coupons, free services, discounts, and other enticements. By catering to “the what’s in it for me?” attitude, you’ll stand a better chance of creating an ad that people will click on.

4. Develop a compelling picture, headline, and ad text.

These three components will make up your ad.

Pick a headline that grabs your audience’s attention (such as Free Half-Hour Massage), and support it with a graphic that depicts the offer. Then use simple, clear words to further explain the benefits of clicking on your Facebook ads.

5. Keep on top of results and tweak your strategy as needed.

Keep tabs on the click-through rates of your Facebook ads and tweak those that aren’t producing the desired results.

Modify your Facebook ads as needed, and test out different wordings, pictures, and offers. That’s the beauty of online marketing: unlike print and TV ads, which are costly to produce and nearly impossible to change, you can make improvements to your Facebook ads as often as you like to keep results in the black.

Do you use Facebook ads to reach your customers?

The media can be a valuable tool in your personal branding campaign, but reaching the right newspaper, magazine, television, radio, and online outlets takes a certain finesse.

After all, public relations firms wouldn’t be able to command huge retainers if the process were simple, now would they?

Here are five ways to perfect your media pitch and give yourself a much better chance of success:

1. Target media outlets that your clients read.

If your clients hail mainly from information technology firms, for example, then they’re probably perusing websites like TechCrunch and magazines like InformationWeek. Shoot for those outlets that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

2. Analyze the media outlets you’re targeting.

This simple exercise will go a long way in helping you craft your media pitch.

Sending press releases about a new medical breakthrough to a trade magazine aimed at welders is a waste of time. Study the outlets first, learn about their audiences, and use that information to figure out which ones are worth your time and effort.

3. Always go in with a news hook.

Even publications that don’t seem “newsy” love to break the news. Keep this in mind as you craft your media pitch, which should always include some type of news hook to be most effective.

A news hook is simply a way of tying your story to something timely and relevant in current events or trends. If your new product solves a problem that consumers have been grappling with for decades, or if your service relates specifically to a hot-off-the-press health report, don’t be afraid to make that point the main feature of your media pitch.

4. Create an impressive headline.

“Back Pain Medications Help People Live Longer” or “New Report Investigates Effectiveness of Back Pain Medications”—which one would you read?

One great headline can make the difference between an editor reading your pitch and deleting it. Come up with a compelling headline that lures the recipient in to the body of your pitch, and the battle will be half won.

5. Keep it short.

No one has time to read long media pitches these days. In fact, most editors and journalists will stop reading after the headline.

Stick to just a few short paragraphs that summarize your story and how readers will benefit from reading it. Follow up emails should also be brief.

These five important rules will boost your odds of finding a receptive audience for your media pitch.

What kind of pitching strategies have you used to capture media attention?

Branding isn’t just reserved for huge corporations like PepsiCo and Burger King.

Every one of us has our own unique personal brand we can leverage across many activities including job searches. In fact, the job search and subsequent interviews are both great places to put the spotlight on yourself and everything that you (and your personal brand) have to offer.

If you’re transitioning into a new career or working your way up the corporate ladder, here are five ways you can use your personal brand to boost your chances of success:

1. Be Your Brand.

Your personal brand should portray you in a professional light and give employers, recruiters, and networking contacts a strong, positive impression of you, your skills, and your attributes. Remember: you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

2. Focus on your differentiations.

Competition for the best jobs is pretty stiff right now, so you want to make sure you’re positioning your skills, attributes, and experience in the best possible light.

Pick two or three differentiations you feel would attract a certain employer, and focus on them in your résumé and other materials you send to him or her.

3. Create an excellent online profile.

Whether you’re using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or a combination of the three, you’ll want to take the time to develop an online profile that brands you as the most desirable individual for a certain position.

Showcase your skills and experience while making it easy for employers to reach out to you with questions and invitations for interviews.

4. Set up a blog around your expertise and strengths.

If potential employers and recruiters see you as a noted expert in your field, your personal brand will stand a much better chance of being noticed in the cluttered online world.

Update your blog regularly and stick to subjects that you know and love.

If you’re a supply chain executive, for example, you might consider writing a weekly blog on the most recent import and export regulations. Or, if you’re a restaurant manager, think about creating a blog that gives readers the inside scoop on the “top spots” to eat nationwide.

5. Sell your personal brand during the interview.

When you get the opportunity to sit down in front of a prospective employer, be sure to leverage your personal brand by communicating your skills, abilities, and knowledge in a way that sets you apart from other candidates.

If you’ve won awards, received recognitions, or completed projects that would impress a potential employer, don’t be afraid to sell yourself and boast a little. Your professional image and sense of style should match this effort. This image goes right down to the way you dress, answer questions, and otherwise present yourself.

How have you used your personal brand to become more marketable.

You just received the alarming news: your employer no longer needs your services.

As you’re handed a pink slip and a few weeks’ worth of severance pay, there’s probably a jumble of thoughts going through your mind about your layoff, career and financial stability.

The fact that you’re definitely not alone doesn’t make you feel any better—particularly since you know that the job market is tight and economic recovery is still in its infancy.

It’s important to understand that it often takes more than simply dusting off your old résumé and hoping for the best to land on your feet after a layoff.

By following the 8 tips below, you’ll not only improve your current situation, but you’ll also put your best foot forward and bounce back quickly after a layoff.

1. Let yourself mourn a bit, but not too much.

Take a few days off to contemplate your career, your life, and your goals.

During this time, feel free to gripe to your friends and family about your layoff. If you let your emotions out instead of bottling up your anger and fears, you’ll be in a better position to move on to bigger and better things.

2. Update your résumé to current standards.

A paper résumé just doesn’t cut it anymore.

If it’s been five years or more since your last job hunt, you’ll want to do some Internet research to see what has changed regarding the creation and distribution of résumés. You might be surprised to learn that your next employer prefers video resumes!

3. Take some time for yourself.

If you were pulling 12-hour shifts for the last 10 years, take some time while you’re in between jobs to go to the gym, freshen up the paint in your kitchen, or just hang out with your friends and family.

4. Talk to recruiters and career counselors.

Find out where the opportunities are and where your skills and experience fit into the picture. A good counselor can help you select a path that you may enjoy even more than your previous career.

5. Go back to school.

Depending on how long it takes to find a new job, you may have time to enhance your knowledge and skills in the classroom.

Check out your local community college’s continuing education offerings or surf around the Internet for the many online options that have cropped up over the last few years.

6. Create a plan for success.

Put together a game plan that includes all of your job hunting, educational, and life goals. Review and tweak it as needed, and refer to it often.

Record your progress on the plan, which will serve as a valuable benchmarking tool during this between-job period.

7. Watch your cash flow.

This isn’t the time to buy a new car or purchase that new, second home on the beach. Since you can’t be positive when you’ll be getting a paycheck again, now is a good time to guard your savings and live a bit more frugally.

8. Network, network, network.

Reach out to business contacts and friends alike.

Take them to lunch or meet them at your local Starbucks for short pow-wows. Tell them about your situation, discuss employment possibilities, and pick their brains. You may be surprised at the valuable connections you can make with these simple moves.

How did you survive a layoff and land a great job?