This week I’ve seen several examples of ‘rule-breaking’ in marketing and social media. Minimalist business writer Everett Bogue has decided to turn off commenting on his popular Far Beyond The Stars blog. John Boitnott writes about how the New York…
Facebook dominated the social media/online marketing news this week with their launch of Facebook Places – a location-based service along the lines of FourSquare which allows you to “check in” via Facebook to various places you go. While there was…
Here’s a very simple model for thinking about three main social media channels: your blog, Facebook and Twitter. I should say that this model applies in particular to solopreneurs and small businesses who are still developing their following and trying…
Just to keep you in the loop, here are some of the top stories in the social media and online marketing world from the past week: Facebook announces changes to Pages Come August 23rd, Facebook’s long-talked about about changes to…
Yesterday, my go-to Twitter application, Hootsuite, decided to go ‘freemium.’ Without getting into the pros and cons, I’ll just say that while they are still offering a free service, it is very limited compared to the rich features I’ve been…
The next online training webinar is scheduled for : Wednesday, August 25, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (PT) Fee: $10 The topic is: “Set Up Your WordPress Site For Success”. If you’ve got your WordPress site up and…
I find that many people have heard that they ‘should’ have a blog, but worry that they are just not the blogging type, or don’t think they will have anything to say. Is there still hope without a blog? I…
This past week these two major companies have provided a mini-study in a few do’s and don’ts of email marketing. I hate to call people out, but, you know, a huge national company should really know better. I signed up…
WordPress has an in-built image gallery feature which does not yet seem to be common knowledge even though it’s incredibly simple to use. So let’s say you are writing a post that you want to include an image gallery in.…
My online workshop series is launching July 14th with a free introduction to WordPress. If you’ve been shy to get WordPress set up on your site, this is your chance to have a guided tour to installation, plugins, themes, widgets,…
WordPress 3.0 “Thelonious” has now been officially released (as you may have noticed from the upgrade prompt at the top of your WP dashboard). I’ll be doing a couple of posts about the new features – in this one I’ll…
In a previous article I discussed how to add thumbnail images to your Thesis teasers as an easy way to customize the look. Another fairly simple tweak you can make to the teasers is to change the width. By default…
Teasers are nice default feature of the Thesis WordPress theme. However, to take them to the next level there are a couple of nice n’ easy customizations you can make to move beyond the default look. This post will discuss…
Head over to Small Business CEO to read my guest post on “Facebook Strategy For Your Small Business.” I discuss the reality of using Facebook to market your small business organically – which is that it’s difficult! Facebook’s primary concern…
Should You Worry About Your Bounce Rate? A low bounce rate is often cited as a hallmark of a good website – 40% or lower is typically heralded as the goal. But does it really matter that much? The answer…
Using some of Facebook’s native features will help you organically grow your audience whether using a personal profile or business Page. 1) Hyper target your status updates (personal profile) When you post any type of status update you now have…
Business owners are often asking how they can be ranked #1 on Google, or if they should trust the company that told them they would guarantee a first place ranking. A common turn of phrase is that a company told…
This past weekend I gave a presentation at OC Wordcamp, discussing using a WordPress site for marketing your business, service or product. As promised, here are the some of the key points, along with links and tools that were mentioned.…
I’ve been given the opportunity to speak this weekend at OC Wordcamp (thanks Brandon!) on the topic: WordPress for Marketing. I will be discussing ways to optimize your blog to market yourself, your business or service. I’ll be covering things…
Sometimes I give some freebie advice to my subscribers and readers by way of a blog post. I received an email from Becky at Classy Sassy Couture who is looking for more ways to market her website and improve her…
I frequently come across frustrated business owners who are still of the “build it and they will come” mentality. They don’t understand why they are not getting more web traffic, or why their marketing efforts are not having the desired…
The folks over at BitRebels.com have been kind enough to publish an article by yours truly. They just launched a Visitor Submissions section and apparently mine was the very first to be published – woo! The article is titled “How…
Demonstrating expertise in your field using Q&A sites is a budget-friendly marketing strategy that can drive traffic to your website. Such sites allow the general public to tap the knowledge of the community to get answers to their questions. You…
I continue to recommend Hootsuite as the go-to Twitter application. With more features and a better interface than Tweetdeck, and more features always being added, Hootsuite will make managing your social media much easier. Here’s a few of my favorite…
