Smart Marketing Show

WordPress is a diverse and inclusive community. So why do we have specialty Meetups? Do we need one? In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard invite the founder of Women Who WP, Jen Miller to talk about this important subject.

Jen Miller – the WPblab unofficial show producer!  

 

Started a specialty group called WomenWhoWP – geared toward women, but open to everyone!  The setup is a little different than a traditional meetup because “woman dialogue differently”. Yvonne originally coined that phrase. They wanted to be able to share and grow and dialogue together regularly!

 

Why do you need a woman’s meetup?  Men don’t see how much they dominate the conversation (and how much more they are represented in tech – Bridget was one of only a few woman at a recent Developer meetup).  

 

The way women relate at meetups is far different than the way men do. Men also ask questions differently – women tend to include more social details and stories, and men tend to get straight to the point.

 

Friendship is when you say “oh my gosh – me too!”  Women feel comfortable sharing when they feel others understand them or can relate. As their group has grown, more of those women have started attending the regular WP meetup as well!

 

Bridget has a mug on the show that happened because of WomenWhoWP – it came from a friend at WordCamp Mumbai – Meher is doing a WWWP group in Mumbai.  WWWP is now worldwide – women are excited about it!

 

They saw in their own meetup, they & other women in the group didn’t get to spend much time talking together, so they decided they needed to set aside time to really relate with each other.

 

WWWP meetings happen over food at restaurants. They have discussions over dinner so by the time the presentation happens, everyone feels like they’ve bonded and created friendships.

 

How you are physically in a room and your body language matters – it makes a huge difference in how people relate to you.

 

https://www.boldgrid.com/boldlife-episode-6-bridget-willard/#more-14611

 

They have made it a really big deal to encourage each other not to describe themselves as “just” anything… (just a blogger, just a designer, just a writer, etc…) They work hard to validate each other. Wherever you are in your journey – it matters! What you are doing matters.

 

Ages at their local WomenWhoWP meetup range in ages from 22 – 70!  You can’t have mentorship if you only hang around the people who are your age.  They’ve even had visiting 12-yr-olds!

 

It’s amazing what every individual who comes contributes to the group! They all have something unique to add. The group spends time each month also sharing the new things that each of them learned.

 

Amy Hall in the chat: “It’s the acceptance that makes it awesome” – it’s so true – that’s what make the WordPress community special.  Women at the WWWP meetups get to really know when another – they know you when you walk in the room and they care if/when you show up.

 

There was one time where Bridget wasn’t going to attend one month (she was late, having a bad day, etc.) but then she went anyway and when she walked in everyone was excited to see her and made a big deal out of welcoming her into the group. They treated her like family and made her feel wanted/needed and made her day.

 

They have a general, business, design, developer and WWWP meetup in their area – all specialty meetups that all cater to certain people.  As a community grows, and if it’s big enough and invested enough, it’s a great way to help grow and expand specific skill sets.

 

Make sure to get your meetup connected to the WordPress meetup Chapter Program so that people will be able to find it more easily.

 

Zeek Interactive sponsors the Women Who WP meetups by providing the location.

 

At WCUS, they have a special LGBTQ afterparty – sometimes it’s just great to connect with your tribe – the people you identify with.

 

The original meetup started by Zeek spawned a whole bunch of spin off meetups that followed a similar format. It’s important to have a format and a plan – when Jason visits other meetups, sometimes they can feel a little aimless.  It’s such a big difference to attend one where there is a schedule and format. That’s what makes the meetups at Zeek Interactive and WWWP meetups so great!

 

As Jason’s meetup grows, he’s noticing there is a growing divide between those who are on a developer level and those who are just beginning and figuring their way around.  It’s around this time in any meetup where it’s a good time to ask yourself – is it time to start a specialty meetup?

 

They encourage every Women Who WP chapter to have 3 organizers. That way if someone needs a month off, they are able to take the time without worrying about the group. That way they are able to keep continuity in the group and keep things flowing.

 

It helps to have a team and share the responsibilities (and the spotlight!) It helps balance the load and plays to each individual team members’ strengths.

 

Mentoring people and allowing them to grow into the position while they have you as a safety net is really important.  The group should be able to continue and move on even when one of the team leaders isn’t available and has to move somewhere else.  We should be like “sourdough starters”!

 

No one likes to say it but a lot of people like to ‘control’, but if you’re controlling, you’re not mentoring and your stifling the development of your community.

 

They aren’t telling people what to say or how to be a part of the group, they are modeling and mentoring and the group members are learning by example.  Jen: “We’re not in this for us, we’re in this for them – for this community”. They’re doing to expand the audience so everyone can learn together.

 

There are starting to be some specialty WordCamps – maybe someday even a WomenWhoWP WordCamp?! It’s possible!  WwWP had a booth at WCUS and because of that visibility, groups in other countries were started.

 

One of the things they do that’s really different is they invest in the community. When members write on the meetup community page (on Facebook or meetup.com) that they can’t go, the organizers make sure to ‘like’ the comment and reply to them to let them know they’ll be missed!

 

(sidebar: please put your face (an actual photo) on your Meetup profile so organizers recognize you! And everyone else!!)

 

We may be meeting once a month, but we’re keeping things going even outside of our meetups.

 

Intentionally, the organizers choose not to sit together. They’re there for the other people who attend the group, so they distribute themselves around the room. That way, everyone feels like they have access to the leaders. It can be a challenge in some rooms to sit apart but try to be intentional about it! It’s important to make sure you’re always talking to new people in the room.

 

If you want to be a meetup leader, you have to sometimes go out of your comfort zone – talk to people you wouldn’t normally – stretch yourself!

 

There’s a twitter thread started by Dwayne McDaniel today talking about “what’s your favorite part of speaking”… Bridget’s answer was: “I speak because I teach. My passion is that moment on someone's face where they get it. When I speak and they feel empowered. When they come up and say, “That's it?” And I'm like, yeah. You just tweeted.”

 

We try to hit all the topics so that everyone can learn something different.  Even seasoned developers. A lot of times in WordPress, we learn what we need for the project, but not in depth.

 

Jen took a Front End Development course at Udacity through Grow with Google scholarship.  She learned to code. She’s been in WordPress for 10 years so she had an understanding of html/css/javascript but never in a systematic approach.  It really helped her to see all the parts in an incremental way and gave accountability as she progressed through her learning. It’s been great! She’s learning more and more and that’s not something she always to get to spend a lot of time on.  It’s helped her and her community! It made her feel good because she realized any one of the women she’s connected with could also do this! Last week at WordCamp San Diego she actually spoke about Gutenberg!

 

One of the really interesting things that happened, is during the final project she was having trouble getting some of the code to work. She asked the lead developer to look at it and he sent a message back saying thanks and that “he learned a lot” from her problem because he had to go research it, which helped him to level up too! It raised his respect for her and her for him.

 

Jen would never have taken this on if WomenWhoWP had never happened.  She’s doing it to show people that they don’t need to put themselves in a box – they can learn new skills. Just because they are great in one and feel set, it doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t try to enhance their skills or try for something they don’t think they can get.  Jen didn’t think she has the relevant experience to be accepted, but she was! Take the risk – go after something your really want to learn!

 

Tools of the week:

Bridget – https://www.touchnote.com/us/ – it’s an app to send your photos as postcards, prints

Jason – https://www.decksetapp.com/ – a way to do presentations for Mac, makes slide decks really easily without having to do any design work. It is done entirely in Markdown format.  Costs $29 – $116 for a team.

Jen – https://www.udacity.com/ – she loves their learning style and they do so many different subjects in their Nanodegree program | https://codepen.io/ – to store all of her code snippets (includes editor that allows previews too)

 

______________
Show notes contributed by:

Cheryl LaPrade – @yaycheryl

Sherie LaPrade – @heysherie

The post WPblab EP99 – WordPress – Do we really need a specialty Meetup? appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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You have a brand but how are you handling it? Maybe you are self-taught and have a few gaps. In this episode, Jason and Bridget are going to cover the basics of using Facebook for your business. Bring your questions in the live chat.

What not to do:

Do not create a Facebook profile that is not you as a real person! If you create a false profile to manage your FB page and FB takes your fake profile down, you’ll no longer have access to your Facebook page.

A Facebook Profile or Timeline must represent a real person.

https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10151510422339065

 

The worst offenders in this area are churches.

The reason why you don’t want your profile to be your ‘page’ is because profiles have mutual ‘viewing’ privileges. Would you want a business page to see your personal details when all you want is to follow them on Facebook?  Bridget: It’s lazy, it violates the FB Terms and it compromises the privacy of your fans/users/customers.

Tagging accounts and people on facebook to let them know you are sharing info about their services / business /photos is great – tagging people just to get their attention on your random post is not great.  Think carefully before you tag!

Pages allow you to have insights, advertise, host events, and much more. There are 6 different types of pages available. Note, that you have the ability to use Facebook ‘as your page’ – allows you to interact with other pages and people as your page, instead of using your personal profile. This is a great way of getting exposure for your brand from other brands!

Create a Page here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/ – you can make as many pages as you like!

https://www.facebook.com/pages/feed  – see a list of the pages you’ve liked as your page

 

You will need a Profile photo and a cover photo for your page. Profile should be 500 x 500 pixel square. It’s a good idea to have a square version of your logo for this reason. Cover photo should be 851 x 315 pixels.

You can create both in Canva.com for free.

You can also use Pablo from Buffer: https://pablo.buffer.com

Think about who you want as Page Roles, too. Bridget wrote a blog post on things to consider on that here:

https://bridgetwillard.com/how-to-setup-a-facebook-page/

When you create featured images on your blog (1200 x 628), make sure there is less than 20% text. Facebook will accept your ad dollars, but is kind of a jerk about this rule. Even your video thumbnails need to follow this rule.

One of the benefits provided to facebook pages is stats & analytics.  Very helpful for advertising.

“Data without context means nothing.” Looking at the stats content matters, but you need to understand what you are looking at it and what it means for you and your business.

Don’t spend more than 10 minutes looking at your data … it’s too easy to get distracted or lost in the weeds.  Glance at it, gather the information you need and move on.

There is no way to play a YouTube/Google Hangout live video directly on Facebook. If you want to do something like that, you could use something like Zoom/LiveStream. Live video to Facebook is easiest using Facebook Live – one really good method is using your phone. You can interact and respond to viewers live.

You can also schedule your video, allows you to set it all up ahead of time. It will notify the people who said they want to watch, so they’re able to tune in when it starts.

Facebook Live Video- https://live.fb.com/about/

Youtube has a similar feature and will notify users who have expressed interest in your video.

You’re also able to download your videos from YouTube, Facebook, etc. and then upload them to the other platforms that you use. That way it can natively play within that platform.

If you can create events, do so 2 weeks ahead.

 

Guide

https://www.facebook.com/help/116346471784004

 

You can embed your Facebook videos on your WordPress blog – DO share your other content on your WordPress blog!!  Facebook now also lets you record in landscape mode which is better for websites.

After you run your facebook live, Facebook will also give you an option to “Boost” your video post – this is a great way to advertise! Facebook has really powerful tools to help you ‘target’ your ads to the ideal audience.

When you choose send people to your website, you are able to set up targeting based upon:

• Location
• Interests
• If they like your page

We are human beings and humans are ‘social animals’ – people will relate to your business better if you post actual images of you and your team. People want to know you and know about what you’re doing. Everyone has a sphere of influence and everyone's an expert in something. Share that!

Don’t stream live, have a chatroom and then ignore your viewers and their comments – you might as well not even bother!  You’ll never get away from the fact that our brains are wired for social interaction.

When you post something on your facebook page, the very least you can do is like it and if you’re really trying hard, you’ll reply to them! If you react and interact with your fans, you’ll build loyalty!  Treat them well, be friendly, be kind. Stop chasing big “influencers” – go after the people who are already your super-fans and engage them. Be authentic – don’t say BS – say what you mean!

If you’re just broadcasting out and not looking at the live chat, then you’re wasting your time. People want interaction with you and your brand. You need to have someone managing these interactions.  This can easily be done from home or anywhere.

You can hire transcribers or use transcription services to transcribe your videos for you.

Tools/Tips of the Week:

• Bridget – Freshbooks (30 days free trial): not just for accepting payments; awesome at tax time!
  • Jason used Gravity Forms with a Freshbooks add-on – can create auto-estimates based on what they fill out on the from and it will pre-populate Freshbooks for you.

• Jason – Disc Drill: from CleverFiles.com (there is a free version – https://www.cleverfiles.com/ ), also part of the SetApp collection – helps you to recover files from SD cards.. It will scan them and offer ways to recover even partially corrupted data. https://wpwatercooler.com/setapp

Show notes contributed by:

• Cheryl LaPrade – @yaycheryl
• Sherie LaPrade – @heysherie

The post WPblab EP98 – Social Media And Your Brand: Facebook appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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In this episode, Jason and Bridget get back to marketing basics. You have a WordPress site. So? How are you getting email subscribers? What types of strategies work and which WordPress plugins do the best job. Tune in this week to find out and join the live chat to chime in.

The post WPblab EP97 – WordPress Plugins – Building Your Mailing List appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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Tonight on WPblab, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard speak with James Tryon about the pros and cons of fragmenting your brand. Should you keep all of your products together under a company umbrella or have separate identities? Let’s talk business goals and marketing tonight.

 

James Tryon is Lead Ambassador for Wapu.us – helps promote brand recognition for the WordPress project

His company: Easily Amused Inc.

https://easilyamusedinc.com/

 

Salesman Rick – Rick and Morty affiliate links store

https://salesmanricks.com/

 

BlocksWP – resource for learning about Gutenberg blocks

http://blockswp.com/

 

Runs @TheGutes twitter account (Gutenberg related)

https://twitter.com/thegutes

 

A lot of his companies are DBA’s under his main company

 

It seems to be a relatively common practice for businesses to ‘fragment’ their brand and keep separate social accounts for each part of their business – Bridget thinks this is a really terrible idea…

 

Don’t launch a product on a squeaky clean account with 0 followers and no brand recognition!!!

 

Sometimes it makes sense to fragment yourself, such as splitting business and personal accounts where something is not appropriate or doesn’t belong on your single account.  But remember, you are doubling your work!!

 

Bridget – it’s like a ‘stock split’ – you have twice as much stock, but it’s worth half as much

 

If you have lots of products and each product has its own accounts, then every time you launch a new product, you have to start over from scratch!  

 

James doesn’t necessarily like being as fragmented as he is, but it kind of made sense to do so. The current brand he is working on now happens to be in a different industry. Sometimes fragmenting makes sense as a way to protect each of your ‘products’ or ideas from each other.

 

If you are selling a very low value product with one part of your business but then also selling custom site development for several thousand with your agency, you may want to separate them to the cheaper solutions don’t devalue your main brand

 

Sometimes there are also business, financial, tax reasons to separate out as well

 

Bridget wonders what happens if she changes her name – her brand uses her current name, so can she keep her brand name or does she need to change it? …Should you have a company name instead of using your name? Should you consider using a middle name instead of a last name?  There are many factors to consider!

 

The same thing happens with your company – The company, the product, and you are all identities – what is the best way to brand yourself?

 

Do you want to be a house of brands or a brand of houses? (Chris Lema)  

 

When you’re a giant company – you can have multiple separate teams for each of your products, but if you’re a small business, it’s hard to have the necessary resources to work on building each of those separate brands successfully and it likely makes more sense to concentrate your efforts on one brand!

 

You don’t want to find yourself in the position where you realize you haven’t tweeted or posted in several days on one of your brands – fragmenting yourself creates that risk

 

If you have 5 different plugins and you’re only 1 person with maybe a couple helpers, you would start stretching yourself too thin. If you’re questioning whether to fragment your brand with separate social accounts – go ahead and reserve the twitter (social media) handles and/or website domains and then you can phase in your efforts later as your company grows. Essentially ‘flag planting’.

 

If you’re going to fragment – go ALL in. Be cognizant of how much time it takes to build an account from scratch; it takes a LOT of time!

 

If you are fragmented with 2 or more accounts, another question is whether it makes sense to merge them and delete one of the accounts.   The risk from merging is that you’ll lose followers from both accounts.

 

James has an individual domain name and social account for all of his brands

 

CONS: Money, resources, obscurity (starting from scratch can be good if you have a bad reputation, but not so great if your reputation is a good one)

 

When you have multiple brands, sometimes there is brand confusion – where clients will say “oh, I didn’t know you did that too” …. They could have used you to help with another need, but the brand recognition wasn’t there

 

Last 15 mins

James –  https://minddoodle.com/ – mind mapping tool, completely free!

Jason – https://pasteapp.me/ – manage your clipboard on your Mac

Bridget (tool/tip requests)

— starting to use Windows computers more often – wants a Mac standard keyboard that works with a Windows computer!

— stop using crappy CMS’s!

— ask people (customers) where they come from and don’t accept “the internet” as the answer!

Show notes contributed by:

• Cheryl LaPrade – @yaycheryl
• Sherie LaPrade – @heysherie

The post WPblab EP96 – Pros and Cons of Brand Fragmentation appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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It's easy to jump on trends, try to be extreme to get attention, but what price do you pay? Do you get eyes or alienate your audience? Join Jason and Bridget with Guest Amy Donohue this week on WPblab where they will discuss it. If you have some strong opinions, watch live and join in the chat. We're all learning, right?

Show sponsored by PressedLinks

Amy Donohue

• Twitter
• Instagram
• http://gethybridsocial.com/

Know when to take a break on your social when something bad happens. Your business is not going to fail if you take a day off to when tragedy hits.

 

The evolution of social can make your brand anti-social with comes to auto posting.

Make sure you’re not tweeting from the dead.

Show more compassion when bad things happen and take a break from your agendas.

http://halfstaff.org/

https://github.com/Nomikxyz/flag-at-half-mast

 

Social media managers during a crisis, retweet relevant information

Amy doesn't let her clients know when she is pausing their campaigns

Marketing calendars should be flexible.

In cannabis filling tweets 2 weeks in advance could create problems because things change on a daily basis.

Respect the hashtag. Don’t hijack trending hashtags to promote your business when not related.

Use trending topics for what they are for… trending topics.

How long should a social media campaign say paused?

• It depends, how bad was it?
• If you use a location-based hashtag for marketing, pause use until after the news has stopped.
• Taking selfies of yourself volunteering is not good for your brand, says Amy. Put the camera away and use 2 hands to help.

Sell hurricane equipment before that season, not after.

If you have a local business during a local emergency don’t go silent. Use your blog and social media to share resources or help others. – Jen Miller

When in doubt, lay out.

• Bridget

Came from when planing in a band and not feeling a song.

Look to OREO – they were prepared and made their team aware. Be responsive and it can be a win for your brand. – Bridget

Tip of the week

• Bridget 
  • Make.WordPress.org/marketing started using google docs more.
  • Suggest mode in google docs. suggest let you make changes and someone can accept it and the changes just happen.

• Amy
  • Linkedin is a networking group. Also Cannabis friendly. Be genuine, small conversations

• Jason
  • Audiogram app (apple only) https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/audiogram-sharing-voice-for-instagram/id1071562490?mt=8

Show notes contributed by:

James Tryon @JamesTryon

Jen Miller @jenblogs4u

The post WPblab EP95 – Situational Awareness: When to Pause Marketing Campaigns w/ Amy Donohue appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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Ethics in marketing? Yes. Marketing needs ethics, too. After all, many people say “marketing” like it's a four-letter word. Senior Staff Instructor at LinkedIn Learning, Morten Rand-Hendriksen joins us this week on WPblab to talk about ethics in marketing. With a passion for learning new things (including ballroom dancing with his wife), philosophy, and accessibility, Morten is well-known as an advocate for all things forward-facing in tech but realizes the ethics implications. Join us this week for the live chat to ask Morten your questions.

Twitter: @mor10
Site: http://mor10.com/

LinkedIn Learning & Lynda.com

Studied Philosophy at University

Ethics 101 (definition) … there are two terms you hear all the time – ethics & morals – two different aspects of the same thing (two sides of the same coin)

Morals – internalized understanding of what is right and wrong

Ethics – a human definition of systems that you use to define what is right and wrong

If you look at Ethical Theory, you are looking at Moral Traditions – confusingly!

There is often a disconnect in understanding the terminology between the two

“Cryptomining is a good example of why the web design industry needs ethics”

Ethics (as defined by Moren) – the rules that we create to allow us to judge individual actions and see if they are justifiable in a moral context

“Why don’t people in the WordPress community copy each others themes and release them in a different name” – there’s nothing that explicitly prevents it, but there are ethics that keep them from doing so

Kant’s Categorical Imperative (wikipedia) – act as if you want your act to be a universal law – this is how people should always behave

We need ethics in marketing – as you release this thing into the world, how do you want it to be handled

There’s a common misunderstanding that ethics provides you a list of dos and don’ts – it doesn’t – that is dogmatic moralism. Rather, ethics give you the tools to at least attempt to think through the decisions you make, before you turn those decisions to action (and see what the consequences might be)

Example: There is code that you can currently install on your site that runs crypto mining processes on the computers of everyone who visits your site – generates money and sends it back to the owner of the site

• Salon is using adblocking readers' CPU power to mine cryptocurrency
• Salon to ad blockers:Can we use your browser to mine cryptocurrency?
• Salon has every right to hijack your laptop to mine cryptocurrency while you read it – businessinsider.com
• The JavaScript Supply Chain Paradox:SRI, CSP and Trust in Third Party Libraries
• Donate Your Tab

Consequentialism – what are the consequences of your actions and do those consequences improve the common good? It is okay if some people are disadvantaged as long as the large majority are advantaged.

In the case of the Crypto code – everyone is disadvantaged but the website owner, so Consequentialism would say – don’t do this!

Duty ethics – you have to perform acts in a way that you would want every other person to behave in that same situation, not because you have to, but because you actually believe that’s how it should be done

You have a duty of care to everyone who interacts with your website – unless you explicitly state that you are doing this, you are failing your visitors

Virtue Ethics – what kind of person do you become by performing the act. This is the oldest of these theories.  The idea is that a human can only become virtuous by aspiring to a set of virtues.

Is this the type of person that I want to be?  That I would want everyone else to be?

Capability Approach – the morality of an act has to be judged on what capabilities it grants the person it is acted upon. Does it improve their capabilities?

Start thinking about how what we are doing effects the ends user. What kind of future am I building for the people who are using this site?

A tiny toolkit to help you answer your own questions!

1. What kind of world am I building for the end user?
2. Who do I become by doing this?
3. Do I want every other person to do this in the same circumstance?
4. Am I increasing the overall utility for everyone? (everyone might be end user)

What is the value of getting an influencer to say something about your product?

You think they have more authority (there is value / money in that)
It’s because people innately believe what they say – even if not true – and respond to that influence
If you “ghost write” a review and make it seem as if it’s written entirely from the influencer, then the whole trust equation falls apart – your duty of care (ethically) would require you to disclose that information to your audience

The “Milli Vanilli” effect

100% GPL – if you aren’t 100% compliant, you can’t sponsor a WordCamp – how do ethics apply here

Someone has to make a decision about who is affected and who is not, it can become a very subjective decision. In WordPress, that person is often Matt Mullenweg – we are granting him license to do this by following along

The WordPress community largely rises and falls based on whether people are willing to buy into the importance and need of GPL

Ethics is complicated – every single person who is in the conversation will have a different viewpoint – if it’s a good ethical conversation, you touch on all the pain points enough that people are satisfied and everything has been accounted for

If we start over – what capabilities should we grant the end user and how do those capabilities help them improve their lives. One of the big values is that WordPress is free and (relatively) safe to use … you can formulate some overall idea.  We are granting the capability to publish to the internet anyone who has access to any internet connection

There is a constant battle between wanting to be the type of person who creates things for the WordPress community to freely use (open source) and also needing to be able to provide an income for yourself and your family – what is our ethical responsibility to ourselves and the end user?

Bridget: If you’re going to build a product and you decide to start with those 4 ‘toolkit’ questions as part of your branding standards, then you would already be about 70% of the way there

We are building a world for our end users – what kind of world do we want to build for them? What are the consequences of our choices? Ethics should not be a wet blanket on our creativity, it should be a hearth that keeps all that creativity from ‘burning down the house’

What did we do wrong here? How did we end up in the place? What can we do to keep it from happening again?

Tools of the Week

—

Bridget: HemmingwayApp.com

Jason: still using SetApp – but wishes it had Magnet (allows you to move items around on the screen to the edges and makes the windows snap)

Morten: Pocket – save articles to read later – strips out all the ads and just gives you the text – it can also read it back to you!  Even works with the Kobo e-Reader!!

Suggested reading for everyone: Virtual Reality As Possibility Space

Let us know who helped us out with the show notes (we’ll link to you)

• Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl
• Sherie LaPrade @heysherie
• James Tryon @jamestryon (but not enough for a true bi-line)

The post WPblab EP94 – Exploring the Ethics of Marketing with Morten Rand-Hendriksen appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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Amish-born artist Meg Delagrange has always approached social media in an unorthodox way. She’s now in a venture of Design and Marketing at Urban Southern. This week on our show we’ll talk about taking an alternative approach to marketing can sometimes be the best play.

• https://www.twitter.com/megdelagrange
• https://www.instagram.com/meg.delagrange/
• https://www.instagram.com/urbansouthern/
• https://www.urbansouthern.com/

Bridget: “To me, the people that really stand out in marketing are the ones who do it a bit differently” (examples, Robert Nissenbaum, Rob Giles, Meg Delagrange)

Meg has a unique background that really stands out.  She’s helping to build a brand and can provide ‘unorthodox’ advice!  She puts a lot of her personality into her marketing.

How much of yourself should you put online?

• Meg used to put almost everything online, but now that she knows herself better, she gives herself time to process first
• There are guidelines … you may talk about dating, but best not to drop names – you have to know what is and isn’t okay to show …Ask yourself, “will this be valuable to someone else?”
• You can share interesting/crazy stories that happen in your day, especially your mistakes – they can really resonate with people

Don’t be afraid to share benign / seemingly unrelated things about yourself (hobbies, etc) … they will give you more dimension

Started building her personal brand years ago (but wasn’t aware that she was at the time)

It takes time to learn … watch and learn what’s working and what isn’t and ask yourself why different posts work better than others

Shared a post on LinkedIn today about how to write your personal bio

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-write-memorable-bio-brand-statement-stands-out-meg-delagrange/

Who are you – Who is your audience – Who does your brand benefit >> Brand statement

If you are having trouble describing who you are – write out a bunch of things about yourself and then pick the ones that stand out to you

What’s the value in people knowing you, what’s your ‘thing’?

• Meg was born Amish, she’s a single mom… she hopes she brings a bit of grittiness and honesty to her brand

There are so many facets of us as people, that spinning out a giant, generic ‘elevator pitch’ just comes off sounding unnatural

You’re bigger than your job and the tools you use to do your job – what makes you who you are?

Be careful of ‘elevator pitches’ – don’t use jargon that doesn’t resonate, use words that makes sense and that are true to who you are

How do you fight against the system and go against the tide? If everyone is doing something a certain way, and the same way – how do you break that mold?

It starts with the knowledge of who you are and then you start to build a culture around that. Pick something and start with it, you can change it up later and build on it – the truer you are to yourself, the more you are attracting the right kind of customers/people to you

You become so passionate about what it is that you’re doing that every part of you bleeds it

Everyday, you’re scrolling past the people you could be reaching and you’re trying to come up with smart, clever marketing to hook people… but it’s the real moments, the connection with people, that matter more than anything else

Urban Southern desperately needed a new website – they hired Alex Vasquez … they had many references, but they chose Alex because she met him at her 1st WordCamp and told her she was “a really intimidating but fascinating women” and it felt so cool and authentic and she remembered him – He had established a ‘moment’ with her

In the beginning Urban Southern had no engagement with their customers – they’ve worked on it a ton and now spend quite a bit of time connecting and replying and commenting

You need to make your social accounts & interactions something worth sticking around for

When she was with WannaPixel (??) they used a lot of clever social talk in the beginning but it wasn’t really connecting with people. On Colorado Gives Day – they would be really intentional about interacting with hashtags …. that day she went on their facebook and commented very specifically and intentionally on the people who were raising money – it made an impression and someone decided that day, they were going to use WannaPixel

If you’re starting and you have a young agency… plan to be in it for the long game, it takes work and it takes time to build a brand and to build up relationships – there is no “Growth Hack”

Being authentic vs. being rude

We all have challenging interactions with clients – if you can authentically but gracefully express the struggles you are dealing with (take time to process and calm yourself down first) – it can become a relatable lesson for your followers. Don’t make it super personal. Vent, but “vent with value!!”

Try to take the finger that you’re tempted to point at someone and turn it back to yourself and frame the issue around your response and what you learned from it – try to turn a negative experience positive

The painting on her wall (behind her on video) …if you look from afar, it’s interesting, but  if you go up close, there is still a whole world more to discover that’s interesting.  Think about that in your marketing

Did I do at least 2 things today to make an impact and move my business forward?

Everyone should have at least 3 ‘traction strategies’ going at a time (email newsletter, social media campaign, etc.)

45 sales in first year to over 3000 products sold this year… over 9000 people on email list

Read a book on Amazon called “Traction” … implement strategies and keep developing new ones.  Don’t stop the old ones, add to them! Layer your strategies. https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Startup-Achieve-Explosive-Customer-ebook/dp/B00TY3ZOMS/

Come up with your own unique ideas if you can – you can copy and see if that works for you, but originality stands out

The poppies in her painting – within the pod of one poppy there is an average of 10,000 – 60,000 seeds – they have the potential to create countless more poppies! All of us human beings are like that poppy flower, we have unlimited potential!!

Cool pick of the week

• Jason – SetApp “Netflix for Mac Apps” – https://go.setapp.com/invite/oau6xr8a
• Bridget – she wants to go to WordCamp Europe in Serbia … she found a curriculum to learn Serbian through an app called Memrise! https://www.memrise.com/ – Burnout is real… You need a hobby that’s not related to your job – she’s enjoying learning languages!
• Meg – App to save money and reach your goals – http://www.mindbosa.com/
  A Design Kit by A Beautiful Mess https://www.instagram.com/adesignkit/?hl=en
  https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-design-kit/id1292829069?ls=1&mt=8

 

Show notes contributed by:

• Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl
• Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

The post WPblab EP93 – Unorthodox Marketing with Meg Delagrange appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week's guest Isaac Irvine, a personal branding expert, will talk to us about how we can balance the promotion of our employer's brand (or clients) without neglecting our own. Be sure to tune in for this show, which will be sure to have tweetable nuggets. Join the live chat for an opportunity to ask Issac your questions, too!

Isaac Irvine

@theisaac

https://isaacirvine.com/

Social and Community Manager at GoDaddy. I love talking about #PersonalBrand | #EmployeeAdvocacy | #StarWars. #Podcast host. Opinions are mine.

 

Bridget: Sometimes working for a brand is like a marriage – if you get divorced, then what becomes of your identity?

 

Shawn Pfunder told Isaac his personal brand is ‘cheerleader (for the company)… no one really knows what you’re about’ – he was devastated at the time, because he realized he didn’t have an identity outside of what his personal facebook friends saw

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/isaac-irvine-the-unexpected-personal-brand-coach_us_59371d69e4b04331b6694a4d

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-teaches-9-year-old-son-important-lesson-about-bullying/

 

Ask yourself “what do I really want to be known for” … talk about what you are passionate about! If it lines up with your brand, that’s great, but don’t hide who you are! Bridget: “Don’t be a paper doll.”

 

Sometimes we forget, as people, that it’s okay to talk about ourselves

 

A good place to start – Google yourself and see what comes up – ask if those are the things you want to be known for … if not, it might be time to start giving more attention to your personal brand

 

Think about a few things that you’re passionate about and make a list – then go from there, pick a few topics that float to the top and ask yourself “Can I come up with 10 articles/blog posts about this subject?”

For Isaac, the thing that stood out to him that he loved was ‘Star Wars’! He could come up with articles, videos, cosplay etc.. endlessly – it takes 0 effort for him to talk about it! If he is going to be authentic, he is going to talk about Star Wars and engage with others about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB0wzy-xbwM

 

Naturally people will want to talk to you on social media about your job because they perceive you as an expert, but you need to remember to open up and be yourself too

 

If you run an agency/business, it’s a really good thing to have your employees active on social – if people are connected to your employees, then they are more likely to trust your business – because they trust their friends and their authenticity.

 

People can immediately tell if someone isn’t being authentic – you can’t fake that sort of thing. The more employees talk authentically about what they’re passionate about, the more it reflects positively on your brand.

 

If you want people to share your content… 1) make it good and worth sharing 2) be authentic

 

Don’t talk about your official job/roles too much on your social accounts, no more than 20% – talk about what makes you – YOU!  What are you interested in, what do you care about?  That’s what people need/want to see! Get comfortable sharing your stuff! Don’t self-censor so much that you’re no longer who you are.

 

His son started growing out his hair so he could donate it. He was having some trouble getting bullied at school.  Isaac asked him what was going on and asked him to talk about it – he only agreed when Isaac offered to record it and share it! (he loves the idea of becoming a popular YouTube video personality).  Isaac posted the video and didn’t think anyone would watch it, but the next morning, his phone was overflowing with notifications – the post went viral! Over 14,000 views in 8 hours!!! By that night, there were 2 news trucks outside to interview his son.  By the next day it was on CNN, Fox News and Yahoo! By the end of that week it was all over the globe.

 

A lot of people suggested he should start blogs / video series about bullying – there was the temptation to think “this is part of my brand now”.  But he’s not an expert on bullying – he’s not going to capitalize on that because it’s not authentic to his brand – it was a great parenting moment, but it’s not a passion of his.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dad-teaches-9-year-old-son-important-lesson-about-bullying/

 

When building your brand, ask yourself “is this something I can really carry forward – am I passionate enough about the subject to keep this going?”

 

A lot of people will give you advice about what you should share or how you should communicate – be sure to be true to your own brand – if it doesn’t feel right for you, don’t pursue it.

 

Isaac’s biggest advice is use what feels natural to you – don’t force it. Find the platform that works best for you. It doesn’t have to be Facebook or Twitter, etc…. If you’re comfortable with it and you’re engaging with your followers then stick with it.

 

Don’t be afraid to share who you are on LinkedIn too!  People may be following 100 other people in their industry and they are all posting/sharing the same things – if you post something different / unique – you stand out!

 

Jason’s dog instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lincydincydoo/

 

We live in a world where people change jobs on average every 2 years, so your personal brand matters more than ever!

 

Try asking yourself “If you could do anything – what is it that you’d really want to do?” Listen to that and pursue those passions, make that part of your personal brand

 

“Make your content so good that they want to share it!” – Isaac

 

“Find your tribe, hang out, and make yourself welcome!” – Isaac

 

Cool pick of the week

 

https://www.ILovePDF.com  – tools to help you do everything you need to do with your PDFs

https://Unsplash.com  – free stock photos for creative use / blogging, also have a wallpaper app

Instant Images plugin – One-click Unsplash images for your blog!

https://droplr.com/ – lets you capture and share instantly what’s on your screen

 

Show notes contributed by:

• Greg Shaw – @greg1usa
• Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl
• Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie
• James Tryon – @JamesTryon 

The post WPblab EP92 – Maintaining your personal brand while building another. appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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Iteration is exciting and Jason and Bridget are definitely stoked about the new way you’ll interact with WordPress with Gutenberg. Let’s chat about marketing to clients and the WordPress Community, managing change and budgets.

Gutenberg Tour by Bridget Willard

Tour of Gutenberg – Women Who WP – January 17, 2018 from Bridget Willard

Tour of Gutenberg – Women Who WP – January 17, 2018

What is Gutenberg?
WordPress Plugins

“ Gutenberg is more than an editor. While the editor is the focus right now, the project will ultimately impact the entire publishing experience including customization (the next focus area).â€

Discover more about the project.

State of the Word, 2017

Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Gutenberg Hangbook Reference FAQ

How can I send feedback or get help with a bug?

WordPress/gutenberg

A way to disable Gutenberg editor in code? #4409?

Issue #4409

How can I contribute?
gutenberg/CONTRIBUTING.md at master

Gutenberg Theme

Showcasing Gutenberg:a theme to show the potential

wordpress.org ^ the theme in use.

A minimum Gutenberg Theme – Theme Directory

When will it be out?
Slated to be part of core in WordPress 5.0 (Currently available as a plugin in the repo)

WordPress Plugins

Bridget’s Marketing Plan

Freeze Development, build an RC and give everyone a solid 2 months to update content. Make things compatible.

All lynda.com, WP Beginner and all that old 4.9 and before WP content will now be outdated.

Give the community 2-3 months to catch up before releasing it.

WordPress 5.0 Development Cycle – Make WordPress Core

Cool pick of the week

• Bridget – Walking as Creative Fuel
• Jason – 30 Chrome Dev Tools Tips by Jon Kuperman

Set Up Persistence with DevTools Workspaces  |  Tools for Web Developers  |  Google Developers

 

Show notes contributed by:

Greg Shaw – @greg1usa

James Tryon – @JamesTryon

The post WPblab EP91 – Marketing Gutenberg: Awareness & Education appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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New Year presents new goals and new opportunities to either make them or fail. It can go either way, so with our community, we thought we'd do what community does: support one another. This is why Jason created “Just Create January.” Every day of this month in our Facebook group, we have an opportunity to be accountable, share, and even brainstorm with one another. On this week's show, we'll chat about the motivation and results so far and what we'd like to see from all of us in 2018.

BridgetWillard.com | Gutenbridget.com

JasonTucker.blog

There are lots of accountability & challenge groups that start at the beginning of the year; Jason and Bridget thought it would be a great idea to create something like that for marketers/creators

Jason joined a blogging group – they would provide a prompt and members would write about it each day.

#JustCreateJanuary was started to help encourage ‘creation’ of all kinds – blogging, design, video, web, etc. They didn’t start it to build a community – the WPblab community already exists – they did it so we all can create and encourage each other.  It’s different from other challenges because we are already all connected.

Sometimes you just need another person to say that should be a blog post or that should be a video, etc.

Using Facebook to manage the challenge since everyone uses Facebook – one post per day in the group (at 5am) will encourage group members to participate

Submit your creations to the group each day and then others can comment and share and encourage you

https://www.facebook.com/ThingDotDo/

Talking with other people in a group and brainstorming together can help you realize that you have something to share.  The point is to ‘do something’!

Sometimes you just get in a rut, but as you share and talk it out with each other, it can make creation easier

https://lorennason.com/category/create/ – Loren Nason’s curation of the responses to the #JustCreateJanuary challenge

There’s a vulnerability involved with creating – it’s yours and it comes from who you are (very personal). It’s nice to have a place where you feel psychologically safe to share your content with before posting.

Ways of Sharing Content

• Share a Draft Plugin – https://wordpress.org/plugins/shareadraft/ “share a draft with your friends or colleagues for either review or approval.” – you can also set it so the link expires after some time
• www.Dribbble.com | www.Behance.net (Adobe) – designers share & get inspiration from each other
• Better Click to Tweet – https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-click-to-tweet/ – allows you to easily create tweetable content for your readers. Using a shortcode, your selected text is highlighted and made tweetable.
• https://codepen.io and https://github.com for sharing code (or just post it on your blog)
• Make a private board on pinterest and only share it with people that you choose, and make public later. Or, if you don’t want to share on a public site like Dribbble, CodePen, GitHub – share it on your personal website

It can be intimidating to post on sites where other designers / developers can see your work, but it’s a great way to improve your skills and show how far you’ve come

Another option is to share on #JustCreateJanuary and get feedback from a smaller community or message one of the members for feedback/advice

It’s fun to experiment and remember why we’re creators and why we do what we do – we’re all makers!

Sharing with the group can help build confidence by seeing and commenting on each other’s work in a safe space, where you can get feedback and encouragement

At the end of the day, WPblab is about people who are trying to market themselves, market their customers – #JustCreateJanuary is an extension of that

Bridget’s first GitHub repo was about women’s shirt sizes (and inconsistency) at conventions – it’s not just for code.  Anyone can comment on repo’s – it’s like commenting on a blog.

#JustCreateJanuary can help keep you out of the ‘rut’!

Go ahead and write something on a piece of paper and share it to the group – all creation is encouraged! Choose whatever medium works best for you!  It can just be code .. it can just be the start of a blog post … or if it’s something private for a client, you can just say what you are working on, even if you can’t share it

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

• Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl
• Sherie LaPrade @heysherie  
• James Tryon @jamestryon

The post WPblab EP90 – Just Create January – An Incubator and Accountability Group appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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