How to Add Audio to Your WordPress Images

How to Add Audio to Your WordPress Images

Did you know that you could add audio to your WordPress images? We had no idea until we stumbled upon this little gem of an article the other day talking about adding audio to images… Say what?! This feature gives users the option to play short audio clips on selected images while browsing your site. Cool huh?

Think of the possibilities! You could add short stories giving background information about the image, showcase a product or service, simply add music, create a how-to clip about a specific step in a procedure, really…we could go on all day.

So I’ll just start with how to get started…

How to Add Audio to Images Using WordPress Editor

If you use WordPress Editor, all you need to do is install and activate Audio Story Images. Once the plugin is activated, all you need to do is:

  1. Upload an image and audio file to your media library. (Make sure you are in LIST view, not GRID view).
  2. You should see a column for “Audio Story”. Click “Attach” next to any image you would like to add audio to. Select the audio track using the radio buttons on the popup and click “Select”.
  3. Insert image into page using normal “Add Media” button in the WordPress editor.
  4. Publish page and test!

How to Add Audio to Images Using Divi

The process is a little more complicated with Divi, but once you get the process down, it’s really not much different than the WordPress Editor process. Really, there’s one additional step. lol.

  1. Follow steps 1 and 2 from WordPress Editor instructions above.
  2. Add a normal text module to the page and use the “Add Media” button to insert the image.
  3. Save the image module and update the page. You will not see the audio image in preview mode so you will need to publish to see it.
  4. Publish the page and test!

That’s it folks! We would really love to hear how you plan to use this cool new feature in the comments below. If you find yourself in need of a technical virtual assistant to help you with your WordPress website, shoot us an email, and we can help you figure it all out together.

Gain Traction With Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Word-of-mouth advertising aka referral marketing is one of the best ways to market your services and/or products. Like seriously…. Not only can it give you the highest return on investment (ROI) but it’s easy to get started – and a lot of times CHEAP to get started. Honestly, there’s really no better way to hear about a product than getting an honest opinion from a trusted peer.

We wanted to showcase an article one of our clients published recently about this type of marketing. >> Read here

Kathleen talks a lot about referral marketing and how it can help spread the word about whatever it is you want to share. In addition, she talks a little bit about Thunderclap – a pretty nifty tool to book the selling power of books. Give it a read! Then let us know what you think in the comments – Have you had any success with word-of-mouth advertising? Have you tried some of Kathleen’s tips and tricks?

The Simple 5 Step Email Marketing Plan

Is your email marketing a well-oiled machine? The simple 5 step email marketing plan.

Now, if you are like any other business online you more than likely incorporate email marketing into your marketing arsenal. You need to ask yourself, are your emails creating the sales you need them to create to sustain your business? Most online business owners would answer no that that question. I am going to share with you a proven system to get your email marketing working for you like the power house that it should be.

First, let me be clear you don’t need the biggest most expensive piece of software and you are not going to need a mega list to see results from this simple 5 step plan.

Each and every email that you send out needs to have one of five clear and understandable purposes.

Indoctrinate– This email is to teach them who you are.
Engage– This email it to engage with your leads and get them to purchase your products/services.
Ascend– This email is to get them to purchase additional products/services from you.
Segment– This email will tell you what they want to purchase next.
Re-engage/Win Back– This type of email is to bring them back into your sales funnel.

Each one of these emails is dependent on the previous email which creates 5 different stages of email marketing.

The process looks something like this:

5 Step mail Marketing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not utilizing this simple 5 step email system can be a very costly mistake. Once you understand this email system and how each email works you will be able to create dynamic auto responders that work.

Each step must be done in a specific order because you can’t have one without the other. For example you can’t have engagement from your list until you have introduced yourself. And you can’t segment your lists until you have engagement. Make sense?

Let’s take a closer look at each step in chronological order.

Step 1- Indoctrination (Introduction)

Once you have a lead that has opted in what do you do?

The first step in the 5 step process is going to be to introduce yourself and your organization. In this first email you are going to indoctrinate them into your system/processes.

This first email is going to:

  • Tell them who you are
  • Tell them what you and your organization stand for.
  • You are going to tell them why you are different.
  • You want to let them know what they should expect from you.
  • Let them know how often they will hear from you.
  • And let them know what they should do next or what the next step is.
  • This type of email they will only receive one time

Step 2- Engage with your lists

The purpose of engagement emails is to convert your leads into customers. These emails should be making offers to your lists. Your engagement emails should be a series of emails spread out over a designated period of time.

Step 3- Ascension

Every customer you obtain through your engagement series should also receive an ascension series. This is a great way to cross promote other products/services you have or offer higher ticket products/services once you have built trust with lower level products/services.

One great example of this is to offer free content then quickly move to offer additional higher level content by offering a pro level or upgrade.

Step 4- Segmentation Emails

Now the goal of segmenting your lists is to get your potential customers to raise their hand (so to speak) and show a level of interest into something you are offering them.

When they do show interest via an open, click or opt-in they will be placed within the appropriate Engagement Series. This does mean you may have several Engagement Series created for different purposes. For example let’s say you sent an email to Linda and Jim about your free report. Linda opened the email and downloaded the free report. Once she did that it triggered an action in your auto responder to say Linda is interested in this subject/product. Once that has been triggered she is automatically going to receive an upsell offer to a related product/service that you offer.

Now Jim was not interested in this free report which let you know 1 of 2 things 1) he was not interested in this product/service 2) he didn’t have time to open it. The next email could be one of 2 things 1) a new offer 2) the same offer presented in a different way.

Segmenting your lists and moving them through the sales funnels for the different products and services you have can set off a chain reaction of sales.

Stage 5- Reengagement/ Win Back Emails

Okay, now what do you do when your lists lose interest and stop opening or clicking on the emails that you are sending to them?

If you said leave them alone you are making a HUGE mistake. Doing this can and will leave sales just lying on the floor and can results in huge income just lost.

If you want to capitalize on your low hanging fruit it would be in your best interest to set up an auto responder that is designed to re-energize your tired lists. This process brings them right back into your funnel and throws them back up into steps 3 and 4.

One way of doing this is to threaten to take something away if they do not take action now. Another way would be to tell them you miss them and offer them something of value for free if they take action now. Another way to do this is if you offer a free trial moved to a paid service. You could re-introduce the free trial by “extending their free trial”. There are several creative ways of doing this.

If you are looking to have a professional team to create, implement and manage your email auto responders series for you contact the Smart To Finish Virtual Assistant Team. We offer professional email marketing support including Infusionsoft virtual assistant support and can assist you in tailoring this 5 step sales process to your specific needs.

written by – Skye Hawk, Smart To Finish Diva

Why it’s Important to Maintain Your Website

I’m not going to pretend like maintaining your WordPress website is fun, it’s just like any other chore, it’s work and can often be the last thing you want to do. But, it really is extremely important because if you don’t ; it’s possible you will come up with something like the image in this article.

The potential that your website could be hacked is only one of the potential risks of not maintaining your WordPress site. Here is a small list of items that maintenance assists with:

  • Slow Website: WordPress websites run off a platform called PHP. In order for WordPress to run, the server that it is hosted on also must run PHP. As new versions of PHP come out, eventually older versions are phased out.Server’s upgrade to the newest version and remove older versions. If you don’t keep up on your maintenance – your PHP version may not run on your server anymore. This could cause considerable down time while updates are performed and in some cases I have found that the clients theme no longer is maintained and it takes considerable time to get the site back up and looking great again.

 

  • Hijacked Website: It is sad, but there are people, even companies out there that search for sites that they can find a security breach in, through a plug-in not updated or through a theme that someone found an open door in. They hide scripts within the file structure that they have made access into. You don’t see the script by looking at the website, but behind the scenes they are sending emails out using your IP address. Eventually you’re hosting company or google see’s massive traffic. Your email addresses can be blacklisted, your site can be marked as a warning by google not to visit the site, and you can lose a lot of visitors while the issue is worked out and the scripts are found. Typically this is at minimal at 72 hour downtime, sometimes more.

 

  • Broken Website Functionality: Your host makes a server upgrade, you notice that your contact form has been a little slow, or actually maybe more than a little slow. You go review your contact form only to see an error after submitting! You go back to your host or your web developer and find out that because of the server upgrade, your contact form hasn’t worked for two weeks. How many clients could you potentially lose in two weeks?

 

  • Data Loss: WordPress websites run off of a database. I have reviewed many hosting plans, many offer backups, but in the small print, it tells you that you are the responsible party for your data. They cannot and will not guarantee that a backup is in existence and sometimes that back-up might be weeks or months old. Think about the work that has been done on your website in the last 30 days. How many man hours would it take to reproduce the work if the only backup available was 30 days old? Even worse, what if the backup didn’t exist?

 

These are just a few of the items that website maintained can prevent! Your maintenance list can be divided out into Daily, Weekly and Monthly Checklists to make it easier. Smart to Finish also offers maintenance programs for you, just let us know if you would like to be added to our maintenance calendar.

In my next article we will discuss the daily, weekly, and monthly checklist along with important preparation steps. If your site has not had maintenance performed, please consider it now. The benefits could save you hours of headaches and once your site is updated to the latest versions, maintenance could take as little as 10 minutes per week.

The difference between Order Forms and Shopping Cart in Infusionsoft

I get asked this question a lot! What is the difference and when do I use each one. Here is my SHORT answer from a lesson in the April Infusionsoft training class I taught with Tina Forsyth:

There are actually several differences between order forms and using the shopping cart links in Infusionsoft. I mostly prefer to use the order form. Mostly because I like how I can connect a thank you page to my order form without any additional steps. If you want to have a unique thank you page using shopping cart links, you have to first create a customized “theme” that redirects to that particular thank you page which in my opinion can take more time.

As an Infusionsoft VA, my first step in deciding which way to go is actually deciding a few things up front as order forms are limited in a few ways:

1. Will we want to offer paypal as a checkout option?

Yes? Then use the shopping cart. You cannot use paypal as a checkout option using an order form.

2. Will we want to offer any coupon codes or discount codes?

Yes? Then use the shopping cart. You cannot use coupon codes using an order form.

3. Are we wanting to offer more than 2 pay plan options (full pay, 2 payments, 5 payments?)

Yes? Then use the shopping cart. You can only provide two payment plan options using an order form. This might be a pay in full or 2 payments. If you wanted to offer more than that, use the cart.

4. Do we want to give customers the option to continue shopping?

Yes? Then use the shopping cart. The order form is that…an order form to checkout and purchase.

And there you have it – my short answer of the main differences 🙂 Hope this helps!

A Free Infusionsoft Teleclass on May 11th, 2010

Now There’s a Way to Go FAR Beyond Shopping Carts And List Management for Your Clients!
Discover How to “Rev Up” Any Client’s Business Growth (and Work Less for BIGGER Results)

A Free Teleclass on May 11th, 2010

More and more business owners are looking for OBMs and VAs who can provide ongoing Infusionsoft support. These clients either want to “make the switch” from another system, or they’ve already done so and desperately need someone to manage (and leverage!) this amazing software for their business.

Join Tina Forsyth and me for FREE call where we will be sharing:

  • What is Infusionsoft? (Hint: it’s much more than a shopping cart!)
  • Why is it so popular with biz owners? (There is a reason so many are making the switch.)
  • How does it compare to other shopping cart, broadcasting and autoresponder systems out there? (There are some key benefits to Infusionsoft vs. other tools.)
  • Is this a worthwhile skill set to add to your business? (It’s not for everyone, but if your role involves supporting clients’ business efficiency and growth, you MUST consider learning Infusionsoft.)

Register now at
http://www.obmacademy.com/infusionsoft/

Hope to see you on the call!

Amber