Smart Marketing Show

In web design, brand creation, and even creative, the psychology of color matters. In this episode of WPblab, Designer and Developer Meagan Hanes will talk us through some of the considerations on how color affects us — as consumers.

Meagan Hanes

Designer/Developer since the 2000’s

Developers often struggle with design – color can be one of the most challenging aspects

Take a design magazine, rip it up and start making a pinboard in real life – it’s a great way to start training your eye

http://colourlovers.com

Communicating meaning in your brand’s colors

• There is a lot of symbolism in color choices
• Generally speaking, reds are passionate, greens and blues are soothing, nature colors
• Happy and generous can be shown with warm yellow colors

McDonald’s chose red and yellow because they make you hungry but they are also bold, agitating colors that cause customers to leave quicker, which is desirable in fast food!

When communicating your branding, the colors you pick can make or break your message.  Best to pick a color or two and stick with them! Keep it simple!

Orange and Green have the highest click-thru rates

Contrasting color is important – you can get color fatigue when faced with a page or design that is based all on one color.  Your users may not notice a button if it’s in the same color as everything else on your page.

I use this a lot http://paletton.com/
WCAG is important too – Making sure there is enough contrast for visually impaired people can see it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Content_Accessibility_Guidelines

If you removed the color from your design, it should still work and communicate clearly in black and white

There are sites where you can test colors for accessibility to make sure people with different color blindness challenges can see it as intended

If you take off your glasses or squint at your page and can’t see what the page is doing because of color distraction, etc. you need to rethink your design

Everyone’s perception of color is ultimately different.

People are starting to understand warm and cool light and what that means.

Pinterest is a great tool for exploring branding and colors, use it for yourself and your clients

You can choose green for your eco-friendly company, but if you don’t back up your marketing with action, no one will believe you

Pick a main color and then maybe a secondary or tertiary color and stick to those – it gets especially hard to change colors as a company gets bigger

Supreme Red
http://www.colourlovers.com/color/D02120/Supreme_Red

Heineken Green
http://www.colourlovers.com/color/0A7A06/Heineken_Green

Brand Guidelines

“Like a reference guide to your company’s soulâ€

• Standardized color definitions
• Layout, sizing, fonts, etc.

Maybe go to art shows and listen to how people react to get a better idea of how people respond to art and color

Design should be somewhat rigid (color) but it should also be iterative – with feedback/time, sometimes your ideas/direction will change

Tiffany Blue
https://www.pantone.com/crazy-about-tiffanys-the-story-behind-an-iconic-brand-color

Colors also convey feeling and emotion – beachy colors can bring to mind memories of the smell of salty air or the feeling of sand between your toes and the sound of waves

Pinkest Pink
https://culturehustle.com/products/pink-50g-powdered-paint-by-stuart-semple

http://stuartsemple.com/

The Blackest Black Exclusive Rights
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-vantablack-exclusive-rights-436610

http://www.colourlovers.com/palette/2390263/WordPress_Rocks

https://wordpress.org/about/logos/

Orange

Pantone 1665

CMYK 6, 86, 100, 1

Hex #d54e21

RGB 213, 78, 33

Official Logos and Typeface

Your color palette on your website should follow what you’ve established in your brand guidelines. If you don’t have one yet, you need to develop one or get help creating it!  Fonts, logo usage, size, proportions, colors, accepted uses, etc.  Even if you don’t have the money to hire someone to create it, you could even just start a google doc and start documenting the colors, fonts, etc that you decide to use.

Document what you use and save a record of what you do for your clients.  If they come back for repeat business (which they should!), it will save you a lot of time!

The post WPblab EP79 – The Psychology of Color in Design w/ Meagan Hanes appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week Jason Tucker is joined by Verious Smith to discuss how you can market your Meetup.com group using WordPress.

Both Verious and Jason run WordPress meetups

• Inland Empire WordPress Meetup (Verious) since 2012

Decided to try a Google Hangout and see who would show up – met Jason, Russell Aaron was there too (met Russell in Vegas before moving to California)

Meetups are how you build community – finding people who share a common interest. If you want to do something cool and need someone to do it with, check out Meetup!

Meetup is great, but communities aren’t built instantly. Make sure you have a website for your meetup!! There is only so much that you can include on meetup – a website gives you more control over the content you can share with your members and the appearance.

People that you meet and interact with each month in your meetup can quickly become your friends, coworkers, etc… great for if you are new to town!

You can offer learning/training resources on your WordPress site for your meetup members.

Example from Verious: https://philoveracity.com/wp-theme-setup-guide/

https://inlandempirewp.com/

https://wpnyc.org/

Organizing/running special events is a great way to market your meetup to the community – i.e: hackathons, do_action events, ‘Website Weekend’, etc.

https://doaction.org/about/

http://websiteweekend.la/

Verious will be promoting WordPress and his local community at “Startup Week”. It’s a good option if you want to promote your meetup to a wider, non-WordPress community

https://riverside.startupweek.co/

Plugins

• Events Manager for WordPress Events Manager for WordPress – Event Registration, Bookings, Calendars, Locations
• Import Meetup Events
• Meetup Widgets
• R3DF Meetup Widget

_________________________________________

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl

Sherie LaPrade @heysherie

The post WPblab EP78 – Marketing your Meetup using WordPress appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab we talk with Eric Tracz & Brad Bihun of PeepSo about how you can build a social network on your existing WordPress website.

Why do we need a social network on WordPress?

We all live in our own little niche communities – we can translate that into online communities – with very detailed content that is relative to a very specific group / niche

Facebook groups are great, but you don’t get the feeling of a small close-knit community that you would from a social network built on a niche site

There are a lot of people that prefer not to post/share on Facebook due to privacy

When you create your own community, you have more control and you can empower your users – they can help each other and answer questions or give advice to fellow community members

Private social communities can be especially useful for people who want to share sensitive and private information (such as communities built around a support group)

Building community takes time and effort regardless of the method you choose. No matter where you build community, you have to be welcoming.  You need to greet people; you need to genuinely care. People can tell if you aren’t authentic.

It’s important to keep in mind having proper security on your website if you’re going to implement a social network/community – https is a necessity

If you need to really lock things down and keep them private, you could take the approach where only members can invite new people to join, that way they are already known and they can vouch for them. You could also charge a nominal fee for membership to keep things more exclusive.

PeepSo Whitepaper free download “The Secrets of Successful Online Communities”

When building a community, try to think ahead about what you will need and the next evolution of your site.  Will you need forums, will you need chat?  Try to think of the future and not just what you need right now.

You have a choice as the website owner whether or not you want to build a community around transparency with users sharing their real names or anonymity with users relying on screen names

For examples, check out the PeepSo website, which uses the technology – they will also be creating a Community Showcase in the next couple of weeks.  There are also demos available on the site.

• PeepSo|Open Source Social Network Software
• PeepSo on the WordPress Plugin Repo

_________________________________________

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

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

The post WPBlab EP77 – Building a Social Network on Your Existing WordPress Site appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab Bridget and Jason discuss taking on volunteers for a nonprofit and how to keep them interested in working as a volunteer webmaster for your WordPress website.

Inspired by Should You Work with a Volunteer?

Jason works for a nonprofit and Bridget works with nonprofit businesses

With volunteers, you need to give them encouragement (“Yes, you can do this!”), but there are limitations

• They need to know the software (WordPress)

Communication is important, even if you enable your volunteers, you need to communicate with other departments, employees, etc. that the volunteer has the authority and ability to get/share information

Volunteers should be empowered & equipped – make sure they have the right access to everything they need and the right tools to get the job done. (ie. don’t have a Hackathon without making sure your participants have laptops!)

Don’t require all of your volunteers to be in the office when they volunteer – they may be stay-at-home moms/dads or have other work-related obligations and their availability and schedule will vary

If you can trust a volunteer with your website, you should be able to trust them with borrowing a $200 chromebook!

If you aren’t sure if they can be trusted yet, WordPress is great in that you can control their level of access and perhaps only allow them to draft posts or pages but require approval before they are posted.

Editorial Calendar

In the WordPress project, everyone involved from WordCamp organizers, to Meetup organizers, to contributors to different teams … is a volunteer! We need to remember that volunteers are giving of their time because it’s a cause that is important to them and that their time is worth something.

Maybe someone who wants to volunteer doesn’t have all the skills – try pairing them up with people who can fill in the gaps and encourage them to do what they are able to do, rather than discourage them

Add or delete users from your Campaigns organization

Give them a “sandbox”  that they can just ‘play’ with and learn how things work and make mistakes, then give them enough access to be able to do what they need to do, but not so much that they can do damage

• Be very careful with young interns to instruct on ‘behavior’ and ‘voice’ for social media

Social media is typically the primary way people will use to get in touch with you and your organization

• Try not to answer/fix everything publicly, use DM and email as well, redirect to proper channels

Part of equipping people is giving them the information they need to know how to answer questions or who to contact to get them answered properly

The worst thing you can do on social media is ‘never respond’ to someone trying to contact your organization

Have a plan in place for after your “summer interns/volunteers” leave to go back to school. Don’t let those social accounts die.

If you’re relying on automated tech, make sure it’s working, especially if you’re using it during a crucial campaign – make sure that replies are getting to your audience

WordCamp Atlanta – WordPress TV – Mallie Hart – Automation vs. Scheduling – be intentional even with your automation, and be sure to respond to questions

If you need to, divide and conquer – set up a team where someone handles facebook, someone else takes care of instagram, etc.

Have volunteer work-days – gives you a chance to get them all together and observe how they work and what their unique skills are – they may think they fit in one area, but you might find they are really skilled in another area that you weren’t aware of

Don’t put your volunteers in a “silo” – make sure they are communicating – maybe once a month have a meetup or a hangout with coffee/snacks – they will feel more connected and more valued & excited to keep contributing

Referring and bringing your friends is a great way to grow the volunteer base

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

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

The post WPBlab EP76 – WordPress & Nonprofits- Tips on Keeping Your Volunteer Webmaster appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab we'll be discussing how to market your WordPress niche with Twitter Chats. It should be a fun episode learning how to interact with a twitter chat and how to run one yourself using your own hashtag.

Twitter Chats – using hashtags: (#) + ‘keyword’ to filter/track related posts on a specific topic

Back in the 90’s AOL had chatrooms with names where you could talk to people about a common topic. Anyone was welcome and it was public. Twitter chats are the modern day version of that.

Hashtags help you to filter and search twitter – Twitter chats are “LIVE” versions of that search where people are commenting and participating in real-time

You can register your chat on twubs.com but NO ONE can own a hashtag (since anyone can type and use them). It’s important for your hashtag to be unique. If you see a hashtag that was once used but is no longer, you can always ask the original parties who used it if it’s available, but better to select something no one is already using.

Twitter chats can take 3-4 hours a week to manage.
If you are starting one from scratch, ask some friends to join you when you launch!
You’ll need 6-10 questions – extra brownie points if you post them in advance to blog/social media for people to see and plan ahead!
Try to set a specific time for your chat every week & hold them regularly so people always know when to tune in – don’t forget that people need to be reminded, too
Also, do a recap / summary post after the chat for people who missed out.
You want to pick good questions that will produce good answers to help further the conversation! It’s like reverse engineering a blog post. Know what answers/discussions you are looking to have and work backwards to develop the questions that will get you there.
Consider adding a category to your blog for the twitter chats to keep an archive of the recaps
If you get stuck looking for a topic, ask your audience and give them credit for the idea
Be committed – it can take up to a year to develop a solid chat

A twitter chat is a lot like a talk show except everyone gets to answer at the same time – you need to keep things organized or a busy chat can easily get out of control. Use a format like Q1) … Q2)… and encourage your participants to use A1)…. A2) for their answers. Try to discourage hitting ‘reply’.

Twitter Chat tools
==================
Twubs.com
example: http://twubs.com/NPChat
Tweetchat.com
example: http://tweetchat.com/room/npchat
Tchat.io
example: http://www.tchat.io/rooms/npchat

TweetReach.com – get stats on last 100 tweets

When you attend a twitter chat and interact, you know you’re chatting with real people, not bots – you will usually pick up followers and not just random followers, but quality ones

Make a Twitter List based on your chats to help track people who are participating. Then you can engage with them during the week when the chat is not happening.

The main purpose (from a strategic viewpoint) of attending or running a twitter chat is to establish yourself as a leader or expert in that niche

Don’t be afraid to ask higher profile twitter users or users with a lot of influence who are related to your topic to join you in hosting one of your chats!

Oembed -allows you to embed tweets on your blog and/or website

Favorite your own tweets – it’s “bookmarking”! Then when people answer your questions, heart all of them. As soon as chat ends, take another 30-60 mins to go back to your profile “likes” and work backwards to find the answers to the questions. Right-click and select “copy link” and then unfavorite and then go to the next. Pick the 3-5 best answers!

Project on GitHub called ‘T’ sferik – twitter client for terminal: https://github.com/sferik/t

If you do host a chat, it’s highly recommended to add that information to your Twitter bio – when people click the hashtag, it will suggest people for them to follow

Promoting:
use the right social network to promote – think of your audience.
Best promotion is blog post. In your blog, try to include a feature/plugin that allows them to add the chat to their calendar.
Post about it in relevant groups, but ONLY if you are a giver / active participant. A little bit of generosity goes a long way.

Find out what your ‘niche’ is – what is that you do that makes you special! What is that you love, what kind of clients do you take on the most? Is there a theme or a pattern to how you spend your time or who you work with? Are there things that you are really good at?

Look at your twitter analytics – what do your followers / friends have in common? Is your account the right account to run this specific chat on? Make sure if you are going to run a chat – make sure it’s line with you, your areas of expertise, and your audience.

Repurpose content – look back at your old blog posts

_________________________________________
Thanks for helping with our show notes!
Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl
Sherie LaPrade @heysherie
James Tryon @jamestryon

The post WPBlab EP75 – Marketing Your WordPress Niche with Twitter Chats appeared first on WPwatercooler.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on WPblab Bridget Willard and Jason Tucker share some tips and tricks for effective social media campaigns for your nonprofit's events.

Nonprofits are often short on time, money and are reliant on volunteer assistance to help things run

Geocoding and hashtags are two great ways to curate your event’s photos/marketing, etc.

Things that make crowdsourcing photos really easy:

• Smartphone
• Selfie stick (possibly with tripod!)
• Public-facing social media

Re-gramming on Instagram is against the TOS so Twitter is often a better choice for sharing and re-sharing of photos. You can however, share links to the Instagram posts (on FB, Twitter, etc). Here’s an example. https://www.facebook.com/SoCalHiker/posts/10155307306634344

Both Twitter and Instagram posts can be embedded into your blog posts, which is a great way to get the word out and continue to motivate your attendees/volunteers and/or thank them!

You can also create an event gallery on Flickr that everyone can contribute to. Dropbox or Google Drive that multiple people have access to is a great option as well.

Be sure to thank your volunteers/contributors!!

You want to provide good information on social media because people will be looking for updates about the event, answers to questions, and wanting to know who is attending and what the event will be like. Think of the things that you take for granted and that someone new would not necessarily know. Always think “hospitality”.

Make sure your social media avatar shows your real face. People love to see faces and helps people to relate – it humanizes an event. Remember the names of your frequent attenders or volunteers and mention them by name when they arrive at your event.

Use ‘urgency’ in your marketing and peer sharing / FOMO (fear of missing out) factor

Tell a story: all non-profits exist to help humanity in some way and storytelling is a powerful marketing tool that resonates with people

When attending an event, always have an external battery or 2 or 3.

When doing photography for your event, keep in mind that you don’t have to edit every single photo. Make a few quick edits as needed, but then just share what you have.

Also remember that volunteers may not always have the tools available that they need to help out. Ie. photographers – you can have disposable or affordable cameras / phones available to let your volunteers use to contribute.

Ask your volunteers what they are into and see how that intersects with what they enjoy and are good at

Invest in your volunteers and they will stick with you!

There are lots of social media managers who are willing to do pro bono work for non-profits, so reach out to your networks and ask people you know to find someone to help you.

TOOLS:

Media Release form

Nonprofit Chat #npchat

• Ripl.com – Create eye-catching animated posts and share them on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
• Adobe Lightroom – digital photography software for desktop and mobile
• Camera+
• Panasonic Image App
• Pro HDRx – helps with backlit photos
• Skitch
• Tagboard.com – Good for aggregating hashtagged content from FB, IG, Twitter.
• Pablo
• Canva
• Apple Clips for iOS – for automated closed-captions

Sponsors

• Corporate Sponsorship
• The 2017 Guide to Event Sponsorship

Thanks for helping with our show notes!
Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl
Sherie LaPrade @heysherie
Doug Knoyle @dougster123
James Tryon @jamestryon
Jeff Hester @jeffhester

The post WPBlab EP74 – Nonprofit Event Marketing On Social: Tips & Tricks appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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This week on WPblab Bridget Willard and Jason Tucker will be discussing the ways in which you can manage social media using 3rd party tools to help you the WordPress freelancer spend less time doing more.

• Sharing buttons on your blog/site are super important – not everyone is going to have or install extensions to help them share your posts

• Facebook https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/
• Twitter https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator
• Mashshare https://wordpress.org/plugins/mashsharer/ — social media share buttons
• Social Warfare https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/

• Yoast SEO Plugin — Allow Open Graph Data (Social Settings — Enable Facebook)
  • Don’t install with another SEO plugin, just use it by itself!
• Make sure to use and update your metadata!!
• Don’t forget your feature images
  • Use iOS to grab the featured image on a iPhone or iPad https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imagedrain-download-all-images-from-safari/id932866396?mt=8
• Buffer.com — Social sharing and scheduling for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus
  • Even the free account will allow you to set a schedule
  • shares your content at the best possible times throughout the day so that your followers and fans see your updates more often
  • Can choose to share posts immediately or save it to your queue
  • 10 social profiles in the Awesome Plan for $10/mo
  • https://buffer.com/awesome?utm_campaign=footer
  • Supports campaign tracking and analytics
  • ReBuffer – find what’s performing well and reschedule it for posting again!
• Using the right tools for the right reasons is how you optimize your time
• Automation vs. Scheduling – automation does not involve human interaction, scheduling is a human carefully crafting posts and setting them up for optimal times
  • https://2017.atlanta.wordcamp.org/session/smarter-social-sharing-for-killer-content-marketing/
• Hootsuite.com / Hootsuite Pro is $14.99
  • (Bridget’s affiliate link: http://signup.hootsuite.com/signup-upgrade/?utm_campaign=partner_commission_junction&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_medium=partner )
  • Will either automatically schedule posts or you can choose a time
• Link Shortening: Bitly.com
  • Branded short domains from Bitly – https://bitly.com/pages/landing/branded-short-domains-powered-by-bitly?

• Question: Scheduling Tweets, why do them at different times?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0e3tsZeBw0&autoplay=1
  “Dispatch Content with Intention #GuruMinute”
• How to Post to Instagram and Twitter
  https://ifttt.com/applets/aVxGRrtD-tweet-your-instagrams-as-native-photos-on-twitter
• Keep social media content relative to the network your own – be aware of your venue
  • i.e. – People generally don’t want to read a blog post on instagram, they want photos
• UTM codes: A UTM code is a simple code that you can attach to a custom URL in order to track a source, medium, and campaign name. This enables Google Analytics to tell you where searchers came from as well as what campaign directed them to you.
  • Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder
    https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
• Google Analytics – Acquisition Reports – social media
  • 11.4 is the average pieces of content that most people engage with before they decide to make a purchase
  • How to strip UTM Codes https://shoehornwithteeth.com/ramblings/2015/11/strip-analytics-url-parameters-before-bookmarking/
  • If you see someone is a referrer to your site and their referrals are converting, make sure to reach out and recognize them in some way!  Make them an affiliate or send them a mug/gear as a thank you!
• Classic Retweet for Chrome https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/classic-retweet/mejfljhfeahhhicjefeehikaooffggmf?hl=en
  (keep in mind when retweeting w/ the new ‘Retweet’ button, people can turn off your retweets)
• WPArmchair now Conferencia —  https://www.conferencia.io
• https://www.google.com/alerts
• Ifttt.com – tweet when your local wordcamp posts something
  https://ifttt.com/applets/52396035d-if-new-feed-item-from-https-2017-oc-wordcamp-org-feed-then-post-a-tweet-with-image-to-jasontucker/edit
• Use Google alerts to search for you or your company and have it sent to your email first, so you can preview the content before sharing it to your website
• How to share your friends posts on Twitter w/ an image
  https://ifttt.com/applets/33067038d-if-new-feed-item-from-http-zeek-com-feed-then-add-photo-to-twitter-buffer-jasontucker
  https://ifttt.com/applets/12169307d-tweet-when-a-new-video-from-your-wordcamp-is-posted-on-wordpress-tv

Thanks for helping with our show notes!

Cheryl LaPrade @yaycheryl
Sherie LaPrade @heysherie
Doug Knoyle @dougster123

The post WPblab EP73 – WordPress Freelancers: Optimize Your Time With Social Tools appeared first on WPwatercooler.

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WPblab EP72 – WordPress Plugins – If you build it, will they come? w/ Russell Aaron
Russell Aaron – Web Dev Studios

Bridget – Actions do things, Filters change things

What’s a plugin? – File inside directory. Adds or enhance website, or de-enhance, Simmer down down.

Finish plugin, ship it and call it a day!

Built & tested and released, people are installing and then white screen the site

First step in marketing, believe in product. Use it every day. Plugin solves his own problem.

His marketing – let me to take it to a competition at a WordCamp ( Plugin-a-Palooza ) and get an idea of who is my core demographic

How do you promote?

No good marketing thing on the repo… The repo has copy… Real people don’t know repo. Directory good compromise for users.

Have a good call to action. Make sense in your copy. Have someone else write the copy. Don’t use terms dev terms. Use words your audience will understand.

No one is looking for the product by your name.

Users look for Automatic scheduling twitter. “Revival posts” not the name you’re searching for.

Use descriptive copy in the repository listing… it may sound like an infomercial but you need to use words that the audience will easily understand.

Listen to people in meetup groups. People want to see a top level view of their site, top “query all the posts types” came up.
What are people saying about your plugins and how do you tap into that?

Get close to pain points essential to marketing. Finding the thing that people ask about over and over again is a good guide to what you should be talking / posting about.

Word of Mouth. People willing to try things. WordCamp people will experiment about things and new products.

Intro with “Hi my name is russ and you might like my plugin ‘query all the post types’”

Use your community to make your plugin better.

User feedback. Take it to meetup group. Discounts for early adopters

First step of marketing is help evolve the plugin

“I need something to do – how can I solve a problem?” Combine those things together and a plugin is born!

Don’t get too used car salesman. Somewhere between peace corps and something…..

If you make a plugin and put it in the repo, you’re going to get a lot of questions and suggestions for changes to make it better

For a tweet about styling gravity forms. Meghan said “shutup and take my money”. Had an idea and built a plugin to just enqueue a stylesheet.

Don’t wait tooo long to make premium version of plugin

You need a marketing brief – Set achievable, measureable goals. I want 10 downloads a month.

Goal 500 or 1000 active installs – figure out how to get that.

• Get on twitter.
• Tweet 3 times a day.
• Make sure to hit ‘reply’.
• Be a human being
• Organic content marketing
• Community advertising
• Be on every front possible
• 4 times a week posts on the blog

Have a strategy
Tell people you exist. You won't make a living for at least 3 years on only the plugin.

Russell: If you write something that solves a problem and you tweet it with the right hashtags and get it in front of the right people – it can almost promote itself! People are going to share it.

Bridget: Be a Human Being. Develop relationships. Then it will matter to people when you share projects you are working on.

James Law ( Ninja Forms ) charge what it is. Don’t do discounts.

• Plugins Admin Bar – WordPress Plugin Adding Plugin Link To WP Admin Bar Sub Menu
• Hashtag URL Placeholder
• Query All The Post Types – WordPress Post Type Scanner Plugin
• Maintainn Tools

Russell’s marketing strategy – I want to help people. If I can get on a show or got to a meetup and share something that helps, I’m doing my job

Show people that you are not one-dimensional – that you are more than just WordPress – that you have interests and other activities that people can connect to — people gravitate towards authenticity

A plugin should do one thing and one thing well.

We all need each other – no WordPress website has only one plugin.

Russ: Jetpack does many things, but it does them reliably. If people would stop bashing it and just give it a chance and see what it really can do – they’d see its worth.

Russ: you have to be willing to have conversations and be interested in what they're saying. Bridget need help, how can you help her?

Russ: Be a better role model. Write plugins, reach out to AWP group and answer valid questions. Success = Help someone out there that needs to help without being there.

Success in a nutshell – plugin solves a problem and the community is better off for it.

Bridget: Tooting horn is marketing

Marketing is a necessary part of any business model.

Plugins need to be seen as legitimate.

Everyone who participates elevates the brand!

Bridget: Leo Laporte. Follow him! TWiT|Netcasts you love from people you trust ​Leo Laporte – Broadcaster, podcaster, tech pundit. Founder, TWiT Netcast Network. The Tech Guy on the Premiere radio network MacBreak Weekly. This week in Tech

As you become a better role model you get a stamp of approval. Seen as trusted.

Bridget: Start blogging about events

Let people know that you’re involved in the space

Start talking about your plugin on your blog

Search Results for “brad parbs”
bradp (Brad Parbs) / Repositories

Marketing is kinda like SEO. target a group or someone well, then you can change it later.

Marketing is telling something instead of pitching
Let me tell you how this car is going to help your family down the road.

Wrote a plugin, enter it into a contest and the marketing solved itself.

Doing stuff in the community and WordCamp talks is allowing you to pimp your brand.

Do twitter for 5 minutes. Be successful.

Sing Papa Roch!

• Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS-WordPress
• Make a backup. @jpurpleman seconds that statement.
• Jason Tucker-Geek, Dad, IT Manager & WordPress Dev
• RusselleNVy
• WordPress Support and Maintenance Services by Maintainn
• Webdevstudios.com
• Pluginize-High performance WordPress plugins
• WordImpress:Impressive WordPress Plugins and Support
• @enqueue_russ
• WPwatercooler 11am PST

Thanks for helping with the show notes:

Jonathan Perlman – @jpurpleman
Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl
Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie

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This week on WPblab we're talking with Sherie & Cheryl LaPrade about using Twitter to market your WordPress side hustle. If you run your own business and you are looking for ways to market it, this show will be perfect for you.

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This week on WPblab we're at a new time 7-8pm Pacific and will be talking with David Blackmon about his Divi Chat podcast and how he used his show to build community around Divi page builder and Elegant Themes.

David Blackmon – Divi Chat http://divi.chat/

How to start a WordPress podcast

Started in a Facebook group, many folks helping one another in there talking about WordPress and Divi

Decided to have a meetup and 15-20 people showed up from around the world!  Nick – founder of ElegantThemes – came down with his team and hung out as well.

David had a great love for podcasts and saw the potential in it – great medium, easily consumable, a great marketing vehicle to get a message out

Was originally going to start his own podcast, but when he met  up with a bunch of his online WordPress and Divi friends in person, he decided to start a show similar to WP Watercooler, but about the Divi platform  (Using YouTube Live – also uploads the audio to iTunes)

Google Spreadsheet with topics listed for upcoming episodes – 30 to 90 days out

Getting guests can be tricky, especially if you like to plan ahead – be prepared for cancellations

http://roadtreking.com/category/podcasts/ – Mike Wendland (great example of a well put together podcast)

His new show: wpthepodcast.com

Podcasts are a great way to meet and get connected with the larger community, make new friends and network – often get recognized by your voice in a crowd!

MacCast – Adam Christianson – has a very distinctive voice! Met many people because they recognized his voice from his podcast.

Soundcloud is another good site to upload your podcast audio to and get greater reach

Some very ‘Festive’ episodes with Google’s effects, ie. Party Hats etc. Had lots of laughs, but probably lost some of the audience in the audio version because they couldn’t see what was happening on screen – have to remember the audio audience when doing your podcast

YouTube is great because it shows you the exact viewcount of who saw the video when it aired.  You can also see comments, interactions, and how much they saw of each episode

If you aren’t doing closed captioning, you may miss out on some of the people trying to watch the podcast video  www.Rev.com – transcription, captions and translations

Facebook live is useful because it will alert people when something goes Live … people may not be looking for it, but it pops up and they go “Hey, I’m gonna watch this!”

Know where your ‘community’ watches you from … if most of your people find you and watch you via facebook, focus your efforts there …. If most follow you and interact via YouTube, focus there instead

Facebook – comments matter – make sure you are engaging.  Not just liking.  “You have to use words to build relationships” – Bridget  … Sharing is important and helpful too, but it’s still not engagement – you still need to comment to build those relationships.

If you genuinely want to build engagement on Facebook, you need to spend at least an hour a day commenting and replying to comments – furthering the conversation & relationship!

www.yt2fb.com “Make your YouTube Video look BIG and AWESOME on Facebook” -makes YouTube videos look semi-native when posted to Facebook

When you are starting a podcast, people are expecting perfection from the get-go … you should take some time to record “Episode Zero” – you know you are going to throw it away, but it gives you a chance to do a run through and feel out what works and what doesn’t and possibly shift direction if needed

http://wpmedia.pro/

http://wpmedia.pro/the-10-commandments-of-podcasting-that-work/

https://omnystudio.com/ On demand audio publishing platform –  podcast hosting and tools

Enhanced podcasts – post-production is about 30 minutes on average

David – cofounder Aspen Grove Studios http://www.aspengrovestudios.com

Cheryl LaPrade – @YayCheryl on Twitter

Sherie LaPrade – @HeySherie on Twitter

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