Today, March 1st, was designated WordPress Plugin Donation Day.

WordPress is the best blogging platform available, and one of the things that makes it so awesome as a tool for developing rich web sites are the plugins. If there’s anything you need you blog site to do and it’s not available in the base WordPress system, there’s a good chance that there’s a plugin available to extend the usability of WP for you.

Best of all, both WordPress itself and most of the plugins are FREE. Thousands of developers donate their time for fame and glory developing these little — and not so little — chunks of code to make our lives easier, so today is the day to give some love back.

I just donated to:

• Jodi Diehl for her WP-Testimonials plugin which helps me manage a few dozen testimonials I received from clients. Thanks Jodi!
• Arne Brachhold for Google XML Sitemaps plugin which, for example, alerts Google and other search engines as soon as I publish a new blog post.
• Michael Torbert for his WP Security Admin Tools and All in One SEO Pack plugins. The SEO plugin lets me control one of the most important aspects of creating a web page.

If you donate to your favourite plugin developer, please tweet about it using the #wppdd hash tag, and/or comment on this blog post.

You probably heard that Social Networking is the next great thing (among others), so I’d really be surprised if you never heard of Facebook, but Linkedin is probably one of those hidden-gem online resources you may not be so informed about.

While Facebook started as a students-only networking site which in the last 2 years has become the place to be online for anyone, including businesses – and big businesses as well – Linkedin started as a closely-knit professional networking site, and remains true to its origins to this day.

Today Linkedin has over 36 million users world-wide. That’s a great place to hang around if you’re looking to grow your business: either by finding clients or customers to hire you as a consultant, or buy your products. But Linkedin works for you on another level, too: it can provide contacts to help you grow your practise or business by supplying services and/or products you need to grow.

For example, if you’re a product designer, you can link up with a local speciality print shop owner to supply 3-D decals for your products. The printer can in turn hook you up with engineers she may have in her network to hire you as a consultant – and the circle continues – you get the idea…

I use Linkedin for both of these purposes I outlined above, but also for one more, not so apparent one: to grow my email marketing list! You see, the way Linkedin is structured, you cannot easily send mass emails to your whole list of contacts, so if you have several hundred, or even several thousand connections, it would be close to impossible, and certainly not very practical to send each one a personalized email.

That’s why you need to find a way to selectively “move” your Linkedin connections to your own email list (hosted by your Email Service Provider of choice), so that you can reach out to them with information and special offers targeted to their particular needs.

One way that’s been working for me is: I create events, such as my free tele-seminars, and then use Linkedin’s application called “Events” to create a page where I can describe the event and in effect advertise it. From there I go on to send an invitation to my Linkedin contacts – I can send it to 50 recipients at a time. I only send one invitation and leave it to them to take action: if they are interested they follow up by registering on my web site – outside of Linkedin – in effect adding their name to a special list I create for each event.

One of two Email Service Providers that I use and recommend is MadMimi. Their deceptively simple email editor is the easiest-to-use I’ve found after testing a dozen or so email service providers over the years.

Recently, MadMimi added a cool feature that all of you social media fans will simply love: the ability to add a set of icons that link to your favourite social networking sites, such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. Just pick the sites you use regularly and Mimi will place specially designed icons to the bottom of your emails automatically.

These are the sites currently supported:

MadMimi is still free to use for as long as your list is under 100 subscribers! Try MadMimi today!

Check out also these related articles on my Email Marketing Blog:
Cool New Tool for MadMimi
MadMimi Brings the Fun Back to Sending Email “Blasts”

Although email marketing is still the most effective way to promote your business, there are other ways of generating leads or getting more business from existing clients.

What if you could combine the strengths of an online, automated system, which works very much like an Email Publishing System with the

• deliverability of snail mail, and
• benefits of sending your prospects and customers a tangible item?

Would you be interested in trying this almost perfect business-generating system?

Couple of years ago I started using Send Out Cards, an online on-demand printing and delivery system that works very much like sending personalized email, only it prints,personalizes and mails real postcards and greeting cards in any quantity. Want to add a gift card? No problem! Cookies? Candy? Yes, and yes, it’s so easy.

You can use this system to send automated, but personalized postcards and greeting cards. Thousands of great stock designs are available, but best of all, you can easily create your own designs as simply as uploading a digital photo and adding a voice bubble or a caption.

Using Send Out Cards is a great way to get repeat business from existing clients. Additionally, you can use this system is to split-test different cards on a small sample, to see which one to use in bulk, if you’re planning to ultimately send a large-scale mailing (1,000 or more cards).

On top of it all, if you’re looking for a source of additional income, SendOutCards offers a very lucrative business opportunity as well. Contact me if you’re interested in testing it out – I can set you up with a gift account so you can try the system and send yourself a few cards on me.

I am so grateful for all that Boris has done for my business. He has such an extensive knowledge in the field of web marketing and design, that I can rely on him for all my web-related needs. I have received countless comments on how good my web site looks and how functional it is. Thank you Boris!!

Jeanette Bugler
Cake Designer and Entrepreneur, Burlington, Ontario, Canada

Note: This testimonial was originally published as a recommendation on Linkedin

Please leave your own comment – Thanks!