Here’s my list of 10 things every online business must have. Your virtual assistant can help you with these or find the right vendor for you.

1. A simple, professionally made logo that is readable large or small. Take a look at the memorable, easy-to-recognize, famous company logos used by AOL, Coca-Cola, Nike, Microsoft, AT&T, Sprint, Chanel, Chevy, Wal-Mart, McDonald’s  for inspiration. A screaming, large logo header on websites says “me, me, me” and takes up valuable above-the-fold screen space that should be used to describe what your business does. Remember, many users are viewing your website on laptops. Your visitors shouldn’t have to scroll down to see your business message. You have less than 10 seconds to capture a potential customer’s interest, don’t waste it with a large/tall header. Get your brand across with a well-designed, memorable logo and use it everywhere.

2. Banner ads in at least two standard sizes: 125×125 and 468×60. Offer the banners on your website for easy downloading.

3. The original PSD or vector file for all logos and other graphics. You’ve paid for the work, you should have the original work files in your possession. This is one of the MOST important things you can do today for your business!

4. A simple tagline for your business. As Rhonda Abrams said in her post The right tagline can go a long way, “…it doesn’t take a multimillion-dollar advertising budget for you to create an effective tagline. In fact, a good tagline is one of the least expensive forms of marketing you can develop and use. If you don’t have a tagline for your company or products — and most of us don’t — it’s time to sit down and come up with one. That’s because a well-conceived tagline makes it easier for customers both to remember your company’s name and to think positively about why they should use your products or services.”

5. Professional, good-quality business cards. I have a fondness for the UV-coated cards! Don’t waste precious advertising space – put your social media information on the back side or other relevant information you want prospective clients to know. Carry your business cards with you at all times, leave a few in your car too.

6. A three-sentence statement AND a six- to eight-paragraph statement about your company. Why? Many online press release services, business directories and search engines ask for a brief description. Do you have one ready to copy and paste?

7. List of passwords and log-in information to give to your virtual assistant. I give my new customers a handy password log sheet that we keep updated.

8. And this is tied for THE most important thing you can do for yourself and your business today:  Please, please, please use strong passwords everywhere, including your WordPress website log-in and email accounts. It’s easy to say “I can’t remember them,” but if it’s easy for you to remember, a hacker can easily figure it out too. Use this online password generator and change your passwords TODAY and change them every six months. It will save you heartache, website downtime due to hacking, and possibly money and identity theft, down the road.

9. Backup system – you can’t afford not to! There are several off-site backup systems such as IDrive. A good backup system for your important files includes an external drive AND off-site backup in the event your computer goes down, fire, flood, et cetera. For WordPress websites and blogs, the one and only backup system I use and recommend is BackupBuddy (affiliate). BackupBuddy backs up your widgets, databases, content and plugins.

10. Scan all paper documents and save as PDFs. Why? Ink fades over time, paper rips, gets lost, PDFs can easily be sent to your virtual assistant or others, PDFs take up less storage space and can be saved in your paperless backup system (#9).

Join the conversation. What do you think every business should have? How many of the 10 things DON’T you have or do? Share your stories.

Our WordPress plugin of the week is Anthologize:

“A free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.

Please note that Anthologize cannot be installed on blogs hosted at WordPress.com.”        

Use Anthologize for a book and submit it to publishers, compile a compilation of your best posts and articles or press releases and  create an eBook for download, Kindle and more.

Are you a REALTOR with a historic or old home for sale? The three sites below offer listing and other services to advertise your seller’s historic or old home.

Office To-Go does NOT have any affiliate or business relationship with these sites and information is taken as written from the respective websites.

OldHouses.com

Basic listing starts at $50 for 90 days and offers:

• A listing page with everything buyers need to know about your property, including how to contact you. Your page will be built for search visibility, so it can be found more easily.
• Up to 4 photos.
• Plenty of space for descriptions, contact info, and feature lists.
• Easy to set up and change. With just a few clicks you will have a preview listing up and running. Then add as much or as little detail as you want. When you like the way it looks, publish it. And you can change your listing any time you like.
• Links to maps, real estate agent pages, neighborhood associations, local sites, or anything else that will help.
• A View Counter which allows you to track the number of times your listing has been viewed. You can add the counter for each listing once it has been published.

Featured Listing Service

The Featured Listing Service puts your listing on the featured listing page and at the top of all matching search pages. It will also show up randomly in the featured section of our main search and advanced search pages. Just check the Featured Listing box when you publish your listing.

Cost: $30 per 30 days.
The Basic Listing Service is required to add this service.

Daily Home Page Feature

Features your listing on our home page for a 24-hour period. Just check the Daily Home Page Feature box when you publish your listing.

Cost: $20 per day.
The Basic Listing Service is required to add this service.

Weekly Home Page Feature

Features your listing on our home page for 7 (usually) consecutive days. Just check the Weekly Home Page Feature box when you publish your listing.

Cost: $75 per week.
The Basic Listing Service is required to add this service.

Additional Photos and Pages

You can add additional photos and pages to your listing. You can show additional interior shots, old photos, streetscapes, or anecdotes about your old house.

Cost: $10 for every 6 images.
Your first 4 images are included in the Basic Listing Service.

Read the Terms and Conditions also at the bottom of the page.

PreservationDirectory.com

The only criteria we use for being able to list on the site is that the home or property must be 50 years old or older.  The home or property does not have to be listed on any local, State or National Register of Historic Places – again, it must only be 50 years old or older.

What is included in my listing?

• Up to 11 color photos
• Full contact information is included – name, company affiliation (if applicable), phone/fax/email and link to your website.
• Unlimited text that describes the property’s Physical Description, Property History, and any Misc. Notes.
• Viewers of your listing can email it automatically to a colleague, client or friend looking to purchase a historic home.
• Google™Maps provides satellite view of each property.

Fees for Listing your historic home or historic structure for sale:

• 2 month listing = $60.00
• 6 month listing = $125.00
• 12 month listing = $185.00
• Please note – fee is per listing.  If the home or property sells before the listing period ends, the listing fee is not refunded.
  

  
  

  
  

• Additional Exposure Available on Our Partner Website – HistoricForSale.com:
  • You will have the option of also listing your property on our partner website, HistoricForSale.com, which works closely with PreservationDirectory.com’s historic real estate directory to maximize exposure for these wonderful historic homes.
  • Both websites share the same database, allowing HistoricForSale.com to tap into the vast network established over the last 10 years by PreservationDirectory.com.
  • Your PreservationDirectory.com login and password for our secure members area will work on HistoricForSale.com – making editing, monitoring, renewing and/or featuring your listing a breeze across both websites!
  • Fees for listing your home on HistoricForSale.com:
    • 2 month listing – add $15 (total for both sites = $75)
    • 6 month listing – add $25 (total for both sites = $150)
    • 12 month listing – add $35 (total for both sites = $220)
  • How do I list my property on HistoricForSale.com?
    • You will be prompted on the secure submit form – simply check the box when prompted and your listing will be added to HistoricForSale.com’s historic real estate for sale directory.

    
    

• Featured Listing Options (per property):
  • Listing on “Featured Property Page” for 1 week = $25.00
  • Listing on homepage and sidebar of website (your listing will appear on EVERY page of PreservationDirectory.com) for 1 week = $65.00 (includes listing on “Featured Property Page” at no additional charge)

The two plugins of the week for WordPress websites and blog are:

Business Directory “for WordPress is an easy way to host a free yellow-pages-like directory page for your readers, affiliates, advertisers, community or club members. Invite them to submit a simple advertisement listing for themselves on your blog.”

GigPress “is a powerful WordPress plugin designed for musicians and other performers.  Manage all of your upcoming and past performances right from within the WordPress admin, and display them on your site using simple shortcodes, PHP template tags, or the GigPress widget on your WordPress-powered website.”

Have you thanked a plugin developer lately, or taken them for granted?  Make a small donation on their site if you find the plugins useful!  Show your love and support the WordPress community, theme builders and plugin developers!

Facebook lists home phone & mobile numbers. Go to the top right of your screen, click Account & then Edit Friends. Go to the left side of your screen and click Phonebook. Everyone’s phone numbers are being published. Go to Privacy Settings, Customize Settings and change who can see your phone numbers.

When Office To-Go takes over WordPress website maintenance or a new project, we employ these security measures and recommendations.

1.  Keep headers/logos under 125 pixels high. It takes up valuable viewing space, especially for laptop users, that is best left for the good stuff to appear “above the fold.” Take a cue from the big companies, simple logos done well say it all. This is our #1 pet peeve – screaming logos and headers!

2.  Use STRONG passwords of 10 or more characters and DO NOT use “admin” for a username. Create a new user profile assigned to the administrator role, log back in with the new user profile and DELETE the admin file. It can’t be said strongly enough:  use strong passwords for WordPress and any other site which requires passwords. This strong password generator makes it easy for you here.

3.  Use secret keys. A secret key is a hashing salt which makes your site harder to hack and access harder to crack by adding random elements to the password. Visit http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/ and copy the keys into your wp-config.php file and re-upload. You can change or add them at any time. Note: All current WordPress cookies will be invalidated and your users will have to log-in again — minor inconvenience in the name of security.

4.  Select your plugins wisely, too many will slow down your site. Badly coded plugins are a hacker’s back door into your website.

5.  Install the WordPress Firewall Plugin. This plugin investigates web requests with simple WordPress-specific heuristics to identify and stop most obvious attacks.

6.  Move your configuration file one level above the root directory of your server (if you’re running WP in the root directory of your site as opposed to yourdomain.com/blog subfolder).

7.  Do not use wp_ as a prefix for your databases. Most hosts are eliminating that default now but if yours does not, change wp_ to anything else but that.

8.  Install Secure WordPress plugin.

9.  BACK UP your site regularly and keep a copy on your computer and/or off-site storage. If you have a very active site, back up daily. You spend a lot of time and money on your website, don’t skip this! The one complete solution that does it all is BackupBuddy (affliliate), no other plug-ins back up your files, widgets, plugins and database. Need to move your site to another host, this will do it in less than a few minutes!

10. Rewrite your .htaccess file to lock down your wp-admin directory by IP addresses. Add the following code to your file, replacing xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your IP address:

AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Access Control"
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
#IP address to Whitelist
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

This article reprinted with permission of TastingTheInternet.com, Terri Brooks.

So you built your blog or website through your self-hosted WordPress platform. You’ve paid a designer to make it look great, to optimize it to be found in the top of the search engines, and you have got some great blog posts out there for your visitors to enjoy. But have you thought about what would happen if you lost it all? OMG!

There’s no need to fear – BackupBuddy Plugin is here!
(I sound like Mighty Mouse, for those of you old enough to remember Mighty Mouse)

According to my WordPress guru, this is the only backup plugin available that will totally backup everything on your WordPress site. There are several options to choose from depending upon how many sites you need to back up. But well worth the money, especially if you are using WordPress as your website, like I do. Click the link above to check it out and get your BackupBuddy Plugin* now before you need it!

*affiliate link

If you liked, “Awesome Plugin to Backup your Entire WordPress Site” please consider sharing with your friends by clicking the links below. Thanks!

WP Events Calendar and WordPress upgrade. Deactivate the plug-in as it is NOT compatible with the latest version of WP and will cause your front and back end to disappear. If that happens and you need help, contact me and I can fix the problem for you as each fix I’ve done so far have had different resolutions.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/411422

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/409138

http://www.wp-eventscalendar.com/

For Immediate Release

Millbury, MA. September 17, 2008. Cynthia Papia has successfully completed the REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER™ certification to join an elite group of real estate professionals who have earned the prestigious certification offered through the National Institute of Webographers, LLC at www.Webographers.com. Cynthia has successfully completed 12 short courses which include: Online Business Strategy, Agent Websites, Single-property Websites, Lead Generation and Management, Virtual Tours, CMA and AVM technology, Neighborhood Search, Online Transaction Management, Electronic Forms, Virtual Assistants, Mobile Technologies and Blogs.

The REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER™ certification teaches real estate professionals how to develop and maintain an effective business strategy in a web-based environment. It was developed to help real estate agents and their supporting assistants stay current with the ever-evolving RE technology industry so they can continuously provide their customers what they want, online services. Every assistant knows the more proficient they are in various technologies, the more opportunities they will have to win more clients and earn more hours. The National Institute of Webographers offers just that – the #1 real estate technology certification for assistants & coordinators.

About Cynthia Papia
Cynthia Papia, a REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER™ professional, knows how to assist clients to win more listings, attract buyers by turning a listing process into a marketing process, and understands greater efficiencies achieved from listing-to-close. For more information about the valuable services that Cynthia provides to clients and web-savvy consumers, please feel free to contact:

Cynthia Papia
http://www.OfficeTo-Go.com
Info@OfficeTo-Go.com

About National Institute of Webographers, LLC
Since 2004, The National Institute of Webographers, LLC, has specialized in the education, training, assessment and certification of web-based technologies for the Real Estate industry. The REAL ESTATE WEBOGRAPHER™ Certification (REW™) provides consumer-facing solutions, education and training through a series of interactive online courses. Certification, online modules for REALTORS® and Assistants include Agent Websites, Single-property Websites, Lead Generation and Management, Virtual Tours, CMA and AVM technology, Neighborhood Search, Online Transaction Management, Electronic Forms, Blogs, Mobile Technologies, Virtual Assistants, and the Learning Laboratory™, where Certificants can access an array of showcased technologies for hands-on learning. Available 24/7/365, these courses provide the opportunity for working professionals to learn at their own pace while enhancing the skill sets necessary to compete and excel with today’s web-savvy consumers. REW™ professionals provide consumers with a positive and profitable Real Estate experience. For more information regarding The National Institute of Webographers, please visit www.webographers.com or contact Scott Lau at ScottLau@Webographers.com.

Cynthia Papia, REW™

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Cynthia Papia
May 3, 2008
Tel: 888-851-4426
Fax: 480-275-3379

Millbury, Massachusetts – Cynthia Papia of Office To-Go is pleased to announce that she is now affiliated with the International Real Estate Assistants Association, also known as IREAA. Together, they hope to raise the level of awareness of the real estate virtual assistant industry.

Hardly a passing fad, the Virtual Assistant industry grows stronger and stronger each day and is estimated to have some 20-30,000 professionals with businesses in the field. Virtual Assistants (VAs) provide administrative and marketing support remotely via technology such as the Internet, email, fax and phone often to small businesses around the globe. In real estate, a VA can offer relief from such time-consuming activities as listing coordination, lead generation and management and transaction coordination, allowing real estate professionals to do what they do best – buy and sell property.

For more information about Office To-Go or Cynthia Papia, visit www.officeto-go.com. Go to www.IREAA.com to learn more about this association.

About Office To-Go
Launched in January 1992, Office To-Go specializes in desktop publishing, general admin services, real estate virtual assistance, custom business cards and graphics, serving small and mid-sized companies, realtors entrepreneurs, SOHOs, executives, and busy individuals. Visit the website at www.OfficeTo-Go.com.

About the International Real Estate Assistant Association
The International Real Estate Assistants Association (www.IREAA.com) is comprised of several experts in the business of supporting real estate professionals. Together, they possess the skills, background, experience and knowledge to help current and aspiring real estate assistants make their services highly sought after by agents and brokers.