It’s Tax Time – Are You Ready?
Yes, it’s tax time in the US. Not my favorite time of year, but a very necessary one. Ice and snow are forecast for today, so I think it will be a good day to get warm and start getting my information together to take to my accountant.
If you have your own business, you really should have an accountant. I met with mine when I first starting thinking about my business. He gave me a couple of tips to get started the right way, and told me when he needed to see me again. It was a good feeling to know that I had things in order to start with.
If you don’t have an accountant, how do you go about finding a good one? Well, I asked a friend and client who has a small business, and her referral was a great one. So I would suggest talking to other business owners, especially if their business is similar to yours, to get their feedback.
Need more helpful suggestions? Take a look at this blog post on the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. Mike Michalowicz collected tips from 62 business owners to help you in your search, and he included my tip at #23.
Have any other ideas on finding a good accountant? Leave a reply here or over at the TPE. And good luck getting all the paperwork together!
This Week’s Articles of Interest
It’s a new week – and another chance to make great things happen in your life and your business. Here’s a list of articles I found that seemed especially helpful to me, and I hope they help you as well.
I’ve used Google as my search engine of choice for years now, but I am still learning to make the results better. Here are some great tips to use when searching Google from the Work At Home Life blog.
Are you using Google Analytics? If not, this video is a great place to start to get the basics. If you are, watch anyway and see if you can learn some helpful hints.
I’ve heard it from several clients – “I know I should be using Twitter, but I don’t want to talk about what I had for lunch and I don’t have the time for it”. While Twitter is not right for every small business, this article from Small Business Trends of 80 ways for small businesses to use Twitter should provide at least a handful of ways you can use (or improve your use of) Twitter. If nothing else, you should be tracking what others are saying about you, your business and your industry.
Google Wave – have you tried it yet? I’m on there, but haven’t really been able to find much to do on it, but this article gives a great list of 20 ways to use the Wave. How many of these would be helpful in your business…or personal life.
If you found any interesting/useful articles this past week, please share in the comments. And go make it a great day!
Introduction to Gmail
Gmail by Google is a popular email client and system. I began using it 3 1/2 years ago, primarily because I wanted online storage for my email and contacts, allowing me to access them from anywhere (or, anywhere I had internet access.) I have been very happy with how it works for me, but I still have a lot to learn.
So, as I continue to learn, why not share that information. Hopefully it will help someone out there, and encourage others to share what tips and tricks they have learned.
To begin, I want to discuss how to get started in Gmail. First, you need to sign in to Gmail. This can be done from either the Google homepage (click on the Sign in link at the upper right of the page; this takes you to the sign in page), or go to http://mail.google.com. Enter your email and password in the sign in box on the right side of the page. If you don’t have a Google Account, click on the link under the sign in box that says Create an account. Follow the instructions on the next page.
Please note: your username will be the first part of your email address, followed by @gmail.com. Think carefully about what you want it to be. How long do you want it? Do you want letter and numbers? If you are going to give this email address to other people, will it be easy for them to remember and type in? Is is an appropriate name for your and your business (if you use it for business).
Once your sign 
up and log in, click on the Gmail link along the top of the page (to the left, near the center). This takes you to your Inbox.
Now, try it out. Send an email by clicking on Compose Mail on the upper left side, just under the Gmail logo.
Type a message, choose someone to send it to (you can send it to yourself on your Gmail account, or send it to me at (gladys@gsbusinessresources.com), then click the Send button.
Congratulations, you are now up and running with Gmail.
A quick note – I have found the Spam filter on Gmail to be VERY good. I can’t remember the last time spam got through to my Inbox; it is more likely for mail I want to get labeled as Spam. The link to the Spam folder is on the menu on the left. (See its location in image above right) Click on it to get to the Spam folder. Take a look at what is there, and if you find mail that is not spam, click the Not Spam button at the top; the email goes to your Inbox, and you can also add the sender to your contact list so future email from them comes through.pan>
So far, so good? Any questions that have come up? Or, if you have been using Gmail, what questions do you have? leave a comment with questions, or tips and tricks you have discovered.
WordPress Tip – Missed Schedule
I spent part of the first weekend of the New Year working on a blog post. It was meant to go up on New Year’s Day, but between client work and celebrations, that deadline was missed.
When I completed the post, I scheduled it to publish on Monday. I love this feature in WordPress – I can type my posts when I have time, then schedule it to publish whenever I want it to, even if I am involved in something else, or away from the internet.
Monday evening, I checked and found the post had not published. When I looked at the lists of posts, I saw that it was listed as scheduled, and below, in red letters, it said “Missed Schedule”.
What??? I thought I had missed a step in setting up the schedule, so I set it up to publish on Tuesday and double-checked to make sure everything was set as it should be.
Tuesday evening I checked, and saw the same message again. Now I’m really confused. I know I set everything up correctly, so I don’t understand what the problem is.
So, I googled it. And one of the results I got was this WordPress forum post. Turns out I’m not the only one having the problem, but there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer as to what caused the problem or how to solve it. My plan is to first download the 2.9.1 version of WordPress; if that doesn’t fix the problem, I’m installing the plug-in mentioned in the forum post.
If you’ve had the same problem, you may find something in the forum post to help you. If you’ve found a way to solve this problem, please post a reply and share the information. I would really appreciate it.
This Week’s Articles Of Interest – New Year edition
Out with the old (2009) and in with the new (2010)!! To celebrate the New Year, I’ve rounded up some articles to help end one year and begin another.
STACK the Deck in Your Favor™ Strategic Marketing Plan by Cathy Larkin (@cathywebsavvypr) looks awesome. By using the acronym STACK for the steps needed to create a strategic marketing plan, you have no excuse for not working on this now.
I’ve spent time this past week finding images and words to put on my vision board for 2010. This is my third year to do one, and I am exciting to see what develops. Jonathan Fields (@jonathanfields) has an excellent article about how to do visualization with a different intent that is giving me a lot to think about as I set my intents for 2010. Anyone else is making a vision board for the new year?
List of the Words of the Year 2009, many of them from social media and technology. How many do you know? How many do you use on a regular basis??
And for some fun stuff:
Here are some of the worst analogies written in high school essays. Funny, and somewhat painful, to read.
If Shakespeare just wasn’t your thing (or even if he was), you’ll enjoy Romeo and Juliet: Just as You Misremembered It. I heard this story on NPR, and the excerpts they played were hysterical. I hope they take this show on the road, or someone in Memphis performs it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121975740
