Smart Marketing Show

Some businesses take a break, others avoid celebrating any specific day. With our increasingly diverse and global economy, how do you handle marketing around the holidays?

BridgetWillard.com | Gutenbridget.com

JasonTucker.blog

Hashtags are your friend! Use as many as you can! There are many different holidays occurring this time of year.

Know who your clients are (or who your audience is) – it may be winter here in the Northern Hemisphere but it’s summer south of the Equator

Respect your unique culture – what makes sense for you/your business – your brand should be a reflection of your collective personality

Scheduling during the Holidays:

• Be careful with automation … you may schedule something that posts at a really inappropriate time
• Either schedule and respond, or don’t schedule and choose to ‘go dark’ instead (many businesses choose to close between Christmas and New Year’s), but communicate either way

Buffer example: https://twitter.com/joelgascoigne/status/943024640473030657

Oftentimes, social media is the last recourse for people looking for support – tweeting shows that you are available.  If you aren’t there to actually respond, you shouldn’t have automated tweets going out

The trick to scheduling is to make it look like your tweets aren’t scheduled

Make use of the social platforms that make sense for your demographic – if you know that your customers/users use Facebook far more than Twitter, focus heavy marketing efforts on that platform

Don’t miss out on using Facebook Events to help promote … if someone likes or shows interest in your event, it will show in their friend’s notifications and help promote it further.  Also, Facebook will show users events happening in their area and they are searchable!

When you tell your fans to like your event, make sure you also ask them to invite their friends to join them!

Another bonus – When people take photos at your event, Facebook will also ask them if they want to share their images to your page/event!

At the holidays, don’t worry about blasting out a lot of information – there is so much going on, it’s easy for people to miss things

https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Holidays are all about love and belonging – if you can tap into that, and help your customer feel ‘that’ – your brand is winning

For email marketing, make sure to let your customers know early and often about shipping deadlines for the Holidays (standard mail, priority mail, express, etc.)

You can create your own holidays / events – but be sure to promote them properly, just as you would with any other event

Come up with creative ways to get people to buy – Old Navy: “don’t need it by Christmas, pick slower shipping and we’ll donate $1 to charity”

If you understand your audience and what matters to them, communicate those shared values to them through your marketing and it will have a much greater impact

Whatever your marketing is throughout the year, your marketing during the holidays should just be an amplification of that – you shouldn’t change your company’s message just to get attention

Instagram is no longer in chronological order so it’s not the best for promoting time-sensitive deals, it’s better for the soft sell … one good example: https://www.instagram.com/campbowwow/

Be careful with big cultural holidays that are ‘like’ standard holidays in size and scope, but more commercial (such as the SuperBowl) – many words and phrases are trademarked and can’t be used in your marketing – you may need to get creative with your phrasing!

Also, remember your culture and your brand – don’t advertise for a cultural/commercial holiday that doesn’t make sense for who you are.

Don’t forget to make use of Snapchat, and custom Snapchat filters – if your customers post images with your custom filter, it will give them the option to share to your company ‘story’ on Snapchat

A great way to get user-generated content/participation is to ask fans to submit their best photos/videos (using branded filters) etc. and offer something in return – a great example is ElfYourself from Office Depot which started as a marketing campaign and has become a cultural norm and tradition

“Merry Kiss Me” arch at Dana Point Holiday Lights – they created a contest to get people to take and share their photos taken there

Plan your marketing early (September at the latest) and build it up slowly as you approach the holidays – use a broad approach – everything in your social media arsenal. (maybe also remind your users to keep their accounts public .. private account content is locked down and unavailable for sharing)

You don’t want your ads to feel like ads – make them so good and so relatable – that people share them and retweet them just like they would a friends tweet!

Big Takeaway: User-generated content is the way to win at holiday marketing!

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl

Sherie LaPrade @heysherie  

James Tryon @jamestryon

The post WPblab EP89 – Marketing Around The Holidays: A Conversation appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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You wrote something. Now what? You can automate. You can schedule. What works best? How do you start? In this episode, Jason and Bridget will give their tips and tricks to help get you going.

Jason Tucker and his 12-yr-old daughter Jessalyn ( https://jessalyn.blog/) will be attending WCUS together for the first time! (https://jasontucker.blog/10107/wordcamp-us-2017-eyes-12-year-old)

WomenWhoWP will have a booth at the WCUS Community Bazaar! – Bridget will be there, say hi!

Sharing and content management go hand-in-hand – whatever info you put into that CMS you are going to need to share – to get your story out there!

Too many of us have a “shoeless joe” approach of “if we build it they will come” – it doesn’t work that way in real life – you need to be intentional

When blogging (and communicating on social) your voice and tonality need to match – that’s what makes you authentic.  Don’t use authenticity as an excuse to be a jerk though!  How you treat your audience matters.

Automation can be a problem – it can lack authenticity, you need to pay careful attention to what is being shared/posted – does it match your tone / your voice?  Example: a politician that has a search that auto-posts any tweets mentioning her name (with no oversight!) … even bad tweets got retweeted!  Or another example is if someone has automation and they’ve passed away.

Automating is not a bad thing if it’s authentic to who you are (i.e. if you’re a programmer/coder, etc.)

Only 2 things automated on BridgetWillard.com – Postmatic (for commenting) and Revive Old Posts (auto tweets her own articles in a specified time period). Bridget believes in a hybrid solution of automation and hand-edited posts.

Another option (though controversial!) is to take advantage of the bots that auto-retweet hashtags of interest to your audience! The risk is that many people won’t follow them because the account is obviously a bot!

If Bridget really likes an article, she’ll pull a sentence and share it on social media, and then choose another sentence and share it on a different platform, etc. (twitter, facebook, linkedin…)

Bridget would love if Revive Old Posts would make a meta box with alternate titles so it could reshare the same content with different text!

Scheduling posts can be helpful too – can also rearrange your info for repeat posts manually.

Better Click to Tweet plugin – helps you pull out quotes

Each social media platform has it’s own culture, you need to tailor your posts to that platform and not post the same thing on all of them

Setting automation is not a bad thing if it’s in a controlled environment – if you have it set to pull from your own content or from sites that are trusted.

MashShare https://wordpress.org/plugins/mashsharer/ – social media share buttons

There’s nothing wrong with clicking your own buttons/links!  Go ahead and click the share buttons on your blog posts – half of what Bridget built into her site was for her own use, to make it easier to share her content!

How you share means the “full context” or the “30,000 ft view”

• Snowbird ad: utilized a 1-star review saying that their slopes were “too advanced” to market their ski slopes (full 2-page ad w/ large photo of the mountains and valley)
• https://medium.com/words-for-life/a-ski-resort-used-a-1-star-review-in-its-brilliant-ads-so-now-im-inspired-945ba7f31fe9
• Snowbird prides themselves on being an advanced ski resort so a 1-star review stating it was too hard was the perfect and most simple advertisement!  They restrained themselves from adding a lot of design or copy and just let the review (and a powerful photo) speak for itself.

When you’re sharing content, don’t forget to also share other people’s content – it shows that you care about more than just yourself, and encourages others to share your content (don’t live in a vacuum)

Pay attention to what people are saying about your brand and leverage it!  Rachel Cherry posted she had “tattoo-level” love for Slack HQ and they caught wind of it and created an ad around it!  Rachel Cherry https://twitter.com/ruder/status/676165067549900800

When you are sharing content multiple times, try reframing how you present it – say it in a different way to catch a new audience.

Gary Vaynerchuk makes content for Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc. that’s similar but different enough that it works best for each platform

Tailor your content for your audience!  When you are traveling to a different country or city, like Paris, you behave differently because of what the ‘natives’ expect.  Think the same way with your content.  If you sharing on twitter, post one way, on facebook, post another way. The same content presentation does not work for all audiences and you run the risk of fatiguing them!

Carol Stephen: http://yoursocialmediaworks.com/social-media-different-platform-different-language

Swipeable on the iOS App Store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/swipeable-instagram-panorama/id1209900326?mt=8

Instagram is not for memes – they’re really best on facebook!

Snapchat is a bit more casual/natural – don’t need to be as polished

Just start somewhere – start with one platform and use it for a few minutes each day.  When you get used to it, add another platform and go from there!

Don’t try to imitate the biggest person on social media that you can find – 9 times out of 10, they have a team behind their account and you’ll run yourself ragged trying to catch up

There is no crazy secret to getting a lot of followers – be kind, be polite, be conversational, be interested.  Reply to people! What would you say to people if you were having a conversation in person? Build relationships!  From relationships come referrals Win-win!

Show notes contributed by:

Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl https://merrymintdesigns.com/

Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

The post WPblab EP88 – Content Marketing: How you share makes the difference appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard, along with you in the chat room, will reminisce on the show, the community, technology, and even their own careers. We'd love to have you join in.

Celebrating Two Years!!

Late September 2015 – Bridget was working as an office manager for a construction company.  Jason said there was a new video / chat platform called Blab.im and decided he wanted to give it a try and suggested Bridget join him!

Bridget said “I don’t know anything about WordPress” and Jason said “That’s why I want you to do the show!”

Started as a 90 minute show and has since been trimmed back to an hour

Blab.im allowed anyone to pop in as a random guest during the show and they had guests from countries all over

Was originally just a WordPress focused show, so any topic around WordPress was fair game, has since evolved to focus on WordPress marketing and social media

Just as Jason was starting to get tired of / annoyed with Blab.im … it went away! It was the perfect time to try a new platform – tried Firetalk and eventually landed on Google / YouTube

Jason has been using Google Hangouts for about 5 years, so decided to keep using the platform for WPBlab

Having a show whose content is totally dependant on people showing up and asking questions proved very challenging, so moving to have a set topic with guests just made sense

Originally almost felt like a virtual meetup, where the audience was heavily involved in the content of each show

Bridget will be appearing in the Women Who WordPress panel at WordCamp Seattle this weekend (as a freelancer). She will also appear at WordCamp Rochester and will be at WCUS for Contributor Day with the Marketing team.

Both Jason and Bridget have switched jobs since starting and Bridget is now freelancing.  Bridget has also now travelled to two different countries!

Started ‘Community Connections’ spin-off this year with Bridget Willard and Jen Miller – highlighting members of the WordPress community

Where do Jason & Bridget want to be in the next 2 years?

• Bridget hopes her life is personally and professionally drastically different! She also hopes she’s seen Iceland and learned how to do something WordPressy, like make a plugin!  She hopes she finally understands DNS
• Jason is looking forward to some big new projects at work

Where did you think you’d be now, 20 years ago? Are you there, did you surpass it, fail to meet it?

• Bridget – I’ve exceeded my college education, but I don’t believe in 10, 20-year plans – when you meet people and experience things, your goals/dreams keep changing! “The more you experience in your life, the more your dreams change!”
• Jason – knew he’d be married and have a couple kids and be doing the kind of nerdy stuff he does! He’s happy with where he’s ended up and enjoys doing the podcasts and keeping up with his friends without having to be in the same room

The coolest thing Bridget has learned is that she can do whatever she wants to do and succeed if she sets her mind to it, and her friends believe that she can

Show notes contributed by:

Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl

Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

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This week Bridget Willard and Jen Miller speak with Adam Silver, Lead Organizer of #WCLAX on Creating Community at WordCamp

The post WPblab EP86 – Creating Community at WordCamp w/ Adam Silver #WCLAX appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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In this episode, Jason and Bridget are joined by Josh Pollock. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of co-branding your WordPress products.

Josh Pollock – Caldera Labs – Caldera Forms – Caldera

@Josh412, @calderaforms, @CalderaWP, or @CalderaLearn  #catdera

http://calderawp.com, http://calderalabs.org/, https://calderaforms.com/, & https://learn.calderalabs.org/

Co-branding is when you leverage the audience of two different brands by teaming up together to help elevate both brands or gain a new audience segment. (Like the Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer)

Caldera and Give did a co-branding with a tutorial on using Caldera Forms to submit a fundraising campaign
“Create a Peer-to-Peer Give Campaign with Caldera Forms” –  http://bit.ly/2vdvrxH

Caldera & Aspen Grove – DIVI landing page co-branding with Caldera

Prerequisite: Get involved in the community

At some point, you just sit down with someone and say “Hey, I need something” and then figure out what it is that you can offer them in return – how can you benefit each other?

The WordPress community is often resistant to a hard-sell, but you do at some point need to move a friendly conversation to a professional-friendly if you are interested in partnering with them – try not to be too aggressive though!

Go ahead and put your business contacts in a CRM, but make sure you keep the relationships natural – don’t always follow up on the 2nd Tuesday of the month!

One of the benefits of co-branding is you get to play off each other’s strengths

If one company does a post featuring the co-branding, it’s a good idea to do a follow-up post with your brand as well and link back

We’re ALL co-branding with WordPress – WordPress.com now allows users to install plugins and that’s a big deal for plugin authors

WordPress benefits from the volunteers that give back

Make partnerships even when you are just starting out – but start by GIVING, don’t worry so much about what you’ll get back – make yourself useful to other people, give of your time

If you know that you have a conflict with your plugin and another plugin – maybe reach out to the company on behalf of your customers instead of sending the customer to them with the problem – then you both benefit and your customers are all happier!

Great partnerships shouldn’t require a lot of effort from either side – they should be a natural give and take

Reminder – a logo is not a ‘brand’, it’s the relationships that you build with the people who use your product that makes the brand

Co-branding is to leverage the individual relationships that each brand has built with people

Whether it’s going to WordCamps, emailing, or talking on twitter, it’s all about building relationships w/ people

Brand / values matter – don’t co-brand with a company that violates your brand or what you stand for, you need to pay attention to their ‘voice’

The post WPblab EP85 – CoBranding Your WordPress Product appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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In this episode, Jennifer Bourn, lead organizer of WordCamp Sacramento (among other things), will discuss encouraging public speaking from the meetup to the camp and beyond.

The post WPblab EP84 – Encouraging Speaking at Your Local Meetup w/ Jennifer Bourn appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab we speak with Andy Lara on how he build an in-person community online for the Vox Podcast with Mike Erre

Andy Lara – Creative Director – VOX Community

Cohost of Vox Podcast – http://www.voxpodcast.com/

@andy_lara twitter

Mike wanted to create a place where he could talk about and say the kinds of things that aren’t as easy when you are bound by the rules of a church so he thought a podcast might be the way

Started out first online, but grew into an a community

Evangelism / Doctrine / Theology … conferences, meetups, retreats etc … there is a lot of commonality between how churches function and how the WordPress community functions

In marketing nowadays, people don’t want the hard sell – the way you evangelize a product or a community is much the same

Podcasts are one of the best things out there for transparency / reaching your customers & audience that a lot of small businesses aren’t doing. It’s a very low-budget way to create authenticity.

Mike and Andy started a podcast in Mike’s office where they were looking and talking to each other and not at the camera.  He moved away and they had to move to talking directly to the camera and it increased the audience exponentially!  People want to see faces, they want you to be talking to them!

Especially in the tech industry, a lot of people are isolated, working remotely or on their own and are missing out on the human connection which makes it even more important to reach them on a personal level

If you are just listening to a podcast and not doing something with it, you’re wasting it … you need to use the info, interact, give back

Started a church via the podcast … started with 80 church ‘planters’ and was able to launch with over 300 people because they were already engaged via the podcast. They knew the culture and the DNA before they ever showed up in person.

About 50,000 downloads per month for their podcast – people all across the nation tune in

The podcast is largely discussional, two guys hashing out the issues of the day

Their ability to sit down and do a podcast, helps them to take these big philosophical discussions and make them more accessible and conversational … it’s also a resource that they can point people to in the church

When we put our souls into our brands – that has meaning.  When we offer up who we are in our podcasts, that has meaning. It’s like when Matt Mullenweg sits down and does his talks at WCEU or WCUS. It puts a human face on what he does.

Giving integrity back to the audience – they believe their listeners are actually smart, they keep the podcast real and don’t try to hard to make it perfect and glossy

They built in a hefty feedback model where any member of the team can give feedback to Mike, even though he’s the pastor … everyone has something valuable to offer

In a community, it’s important to create a space where people can feel like they belong – you have to allow people to speak and be heard – when they feel safe and they have trust, they will speak up

Conversations and relationship are the things that transform us and make us into better and healthier people

Treat your community volunteers like real people, make them feel that their contribution is meaningful

Give your volunteers roles a real job title to make them feel important. Also limit trials to 6 months to show how people fit. Give them ownership in the process.

The post WPblab EP83 – Starting an In-Person Community Online w/ Andy Lara appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab Bridget and Jason explore Twitter demographics and how you can use them for your WordPress business.

Bridget got a new microphone – YAY!

Twitter > Analytics (available via desktop twitter site)

Analytics.twitter.com

Audience – discover user interests and general statistics, such as marital status and education.  If you were a dating site, you would want most of your audience to show as “single”. If they were mostly married, you might reaching out to the wrong audience (or offering the wrong service!)

How long should your content be? What grade level is your writing aimed at?  Check your analytics and see what kind of education your followers have – what would be best for them?

Newspapers generally aim at a fifth grade reading level (WSJ – ninth grade). Most people, don’t read – they scan. You don’t want to make people feel stupid by speaking at a level beyond their reading/vocabulary skills.

Analytics shows stats on Audience, Demographics, Lifestyle, etc.

Go to Analytics > Tweets and choose to view “Top Tweets” – it will show you your top-performing tweets from the last 28 days — as long as the content is evergreen, you can recycle it and retweet it back out to your followers

Try viewing your Google Analytics and comparing to your Twitter Analytics – do the demographics align or not, and if not, why don’t they match?

There is a whole culture in your industry – find out what they say and how they say it – speak to them the way that they speak if you want to reach them. Social media marketing is like being a sociologist, you have to study the culture. Tweak your writing to reach them.

You can also use your demographics to determine how much to charge for your work and if/when you should raise your prices.

Ben Collins – http://www.benlcollins.com/spreadsheets/import-social-media-statistics

Why care about twitter?  Regardless of how you felt about the election, tweets and people reading them had an incredible impact on the election. Celebrities and thought leaders, writers, artists, musicians, all use twitter to reach their audience.

If you are looking to cross-promote a work-from-home writer job, you are going to want to look for people and accounts that have a larger number of homemakers as their audience

The post WPblab EP82 – Digging into Twitter Demographics for your WordPress Business appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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Segmentation FTW.

Christie Chirinos email marketing as an intelligent combination of transactional emails & direct emails in part with a multi channel promotion strategy that exists as a part of a larger marketing strategy that also takes the other 3 P's into account… also FTW

Personal twitter – https://twitter.com/cicichirinos
Partner of Caldera Labs https://calderaforms.com/
https://twitter.com/CalderaWP

She started in the nonprofit sector learning by doing.

https://mailchimp.com/ (should tag with affiliate link)

They use convertkit on CalderaForms now. https://convertkit.com/

ConvertKit is a great tool from segments but not user friendly

ConvertKit = Photoshop

MailChimp = Canva

Segmented lists

Many lists can create problems with subscriptions. Consider consolidating your lists and segmenting them out.

Example of a segmented

Is this for you or your clients on checkout

Focus your copy

“Or this” or “if that” = Segment

Bridget loves old navy

Use case

Goals for creating one and done leads

1st a month

1 segments

Questions

• Who is clicking
• What are they clicking
• What time of day are they opening the emails

Try for 3 months, Look what happened and change things after that

Don’t talk at people when writing content

Freelancer personal

• Collect emails, Build your list

How to segment your list?

• You can just ask in your next newsletter

I think bridget said a couple weeks ago to think about when you are sending out newsletters. In the morning things get purged. IF you send it later in the day, someone might spend the time to read it b/c no one wants to work after lunch.

The post WPblab EP81 – Data-Centric Email Marketing for WordPress Businesses with Christie Chirinos appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPwatercooler we'll be discussing what to look for in a good WordPress theme.

https://apppresser.com/ & Holler Box https://hollerwp.com/

Challenges of collecting email addresses

It’s much easier to get someones email when you already have a blog and can get them to provide emails to get updates and downloads/goodies, etc.

Generating great content is super important for any site, but even more so for an e-commerce site, makes it easier to get people to opt-in if you have content they need/want

Oh average, It takes 7-10 interactions before you win a customer.

If you have a small audience and low traffic to your site, getting people there and generating sales can be really difficult.  Doing content halfway won’t get you there.

Have a plan before you write your post – need a strategy about what you’re going to write and who you’re aiming to reach

1. Writing for people that will share it(influencers)
2. Thinking of them by name

Being intentional about what you write and who you write it for makes a huge difference

Holler box
https://wordpress.org/plugins/holler-box/

1 article – 10-20 hours writing per post(with research and planning)

Spending time up front will pay you back in spades!

Content is long-term and the internet lasts forever – it doesn’t matter so much if it takes a while to gain traction, it’s still going to be there

Include people in your posts by linking to them or mentioning them by name – they’re much more likely to share and interact with the post than your average reader

Be around and be active – people will notice and reach out to you

Write/share (videos too) with authenticity about your brand and who you are.

Create content that is not only good but is also based on your personal experience – it shows authenticity and builds trust between you and your audience / customer.

Live chat can cause your customers to become lazy.  If you take it away, they will spend a little more time looking around your site for the answers to their questions.

Great idea to include a feature on your site that let’s people know what others are buying – leads to a feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) and encourages people to purchase  **feature of Holler Box

Bridget: “When customers talk to you, it’s good to get the insight.” You know where everything is on your site, but your customers don’t often know how to find it.

Write content about your core competencies and it will help you to attract the right kind of customer

If you want more shares and more traffic , don’t think as much about writing or creating content for your ideal customer – write content aimed at the people who you know will share it and who are influencers in your area. A lot of times the customer will consume what you sell but may not share it.

Don’t look for the biggest people but instead for the consistent users who post often and engage with their audience. Build on the relationships you already have.

Brian Dean backlinko
http://backlinko.com/blog

You can write a fantastic post that you’re really interested in, but that doesn’t mean anyone else will be. You need to be a resource to your audience and offer what they’re looking for.

7 Ways to Use Discounts Without Hurting Your Brand

https://hollerwp.com/discount-without-hurting-your-brand/

If you use discounts the wrong way, it’s bad for you and it’s bad for your business.  If you offer them to often, they will just wait for the next discount.   You need to space them out and make exclusive discounts available only to people who sign up for certain packages.

Don’t offer discounts to get people on your email list.  You are basically being Walmart.  You’re the low-price discount guy after that.   Or you can be more strategic. (and you should be)

What are you offering people with your opt-in? It needs to be something of value to your customers/visitors, or the message won't’ matter.

Evenings are often a good time to send emails because inboxes are not as full.

_________________________________________

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl

Sherie LaPrade @heysherie  

James Tryon @jamestryon ;c )

The post WPblab EP80 – Boosting eCommerce with Opt-Ins with Scott Bolinger appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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