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SEO & Social Media Marketing - Attracting Customers

WordPress Themes

A fellow called me yesterday because he had some questions about my book and wanted to know more about what it covered and if it could help his particular situation.  We had a great conversation and I encouraged him to get back to me if he had other questions, which he did. What follows are his questions to me and my response. I hope this might help you also.

Hi Tom, My Name is Lewis and we talked yesterday on the phone. I was telling you, that I must have my wife and friends website up in the next two weeks, because her GoDaddy account will expires then. For the WordPress site she using Catalyst: http://catalysttheme.com supposedly, one of the best Themes for WordPress. I like to use it since we paid for it, but we can’t I like find a WordPress Theme that is easy to use and works well with the search engines. Do you have any suggestion? ~Thanks, Lewis

Hello Lewis, thanks for the good questions. First off, all WordPress Themes work well with search engines. The WordPress platform, enhanced by certain Plugins, is what interfaces with search engines. It might help you to think of WordPress as the engine and chassis of a vehicle and the Theme is the bolt-on body.  Auto manufacturers will take one frame & engine and mount different body styles with various options and sell them as unique models. That’s what happens with Themes and “Child Themes”.

They all utilize the WordPress engine and create different models to address unique applications.  There are themes that are geared to photo portfolios, magazine style layouts, e-commerce applications, product showcases and of course the traditional essay style blog. The Themes control the look & feel, page placement of text and image blocks, font type, size and color, width and a host of other design-related options.

I am not personally familiar with “Catalyst” in that I have never used it. From looking at their website it appears that this is a theme platform or framework, vs. a generic WordPress Theme. There are a number of such theme framework/platforms that operate this way such as Thesis, Genesis, etc. Their claim to fame is that they offer the ability to customize the entire presentation.

The best part about themes is that the content you create never goes away.  The text and images (posts and pages) that you create over time work like they are part of the WordPress platform if you will. While the Theme will rearrange that content relating to its placement on the page, colors, fonts, etc.

Most WordPress Themes work ‘out-of-the-box’ and require little or no customization to display your posts and pages. The problem is that we seldom can find a Theme that addresses our needs 100% of the time, that’s where the customization comes in.  The problem with the high-end packages like Catalyst, Thesis, Genesis, etc. is that they can offer you hundreds of customizable options, but most come with a steep learning curve.

Additionally, there are free themes that offer excellent customization options, but they also require that you spend time learning how to customize the Theme. One perfect example is a favorite of mine, the Atahualpa Theme by Bytes for All. I have used this Theme for dozens of my customers’ sites and a number of my personal sites. It did take me a while to learn how best to customize it, but that investment in time has paid off tremendously.

The picture below shows just one screen of the many customizable options in Atahualpa. The left-hand column shows some of the main items and the right-hand pane is where tweaks and adjustments are made.

theme options WordPress Themes

WordPress Theme Options

If you can invest the time, I recommend that you choose a Theme that can be highly customized and learn it. You’ll find that it can be adapted to almost any website building project and the more familiar you become working ‘under the hood’, the more rewarding it will be. If you want to find a theme where someone else has done the work to customize it and you’re looking for an off-the-shelf solution, I’d recommend that you browse some of the low-cost Theme collections such as:

I hope this helps you with your search for the Theme that fits your needs. Remember that the best part about WordPress Themes is that you can upload and try out new Themes all day long and it won’t affect the most important part of your site…the content.  Good luck to you and let me know if you have other questions.

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Viral Video / Corn Shucking?


1 Video, 2 Million Views

You’ve probably heard it a 1000 times, that creating good unique content is the secret to writing an interesting blog post or creating a video.  This is true but sometimes we confuse creative writing with good content, and they are not necessarily the same thing.

A story can be written or told through a video, and it can be well constructed and reported in a creative fashion, but that may not make it interesting. Additionally, the topic we are writing about may be headline news or it could be as obscure as shucking corn.

How many times have you labored over a blog post or video trying to make it the best it can be hoping that it will go viral?  What makes this video so compelling that almost two million people have already watched it?

What caused this video to go viral?

Is it the elderly gentleman who is the star of the movie?  Is it do to the popularity of his topic?  Is it the lavish sound stage where this is filmed?  Is it the script?  Obviously, it is none of these things.

This video went viral because it offered a cooking tip that resonated with a lot of people.  It is probably something you have never heard before; I was not aware of this tip and the video was forwarded to me from a casual friend.

This video is the epitome of unique, interesting & believable content.

I can guarantee you that this fellow had no idea that his video would become a viral sensation across the Internet.  If you note from his channel, this is the only video he has produced. Neither his YouTube channel or this video uses any SEO. It does not appear that this gentleman has a website, Facebook, Google+ or Twitter account, for all we know he made this video with the intention of sharing a cooking tip with his kids.

Take away…

So the message here and the answer to creating a viral video is simply to make it interesting.  If two million people are interested in learning a new method of cooking and shucking corn imagine how many people might be interested in what you have to say.

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Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux-pas


Good marketing advice?

netflixdvd Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux pasMaybe you’ve heard that Netflix has decided to rename its DVD delivery service “Qwikster.” A catchy name and one that would be easy to brand, but there is one slight problem; the Twitter account is already owned by someone.  A whois search shows that Qwikster.com has been registered by Netflix, but www.youtube.com/qwikster is also owned by someone not related to Netflix.

qwikster twitter Netflix Scores a Qwikster Marketing Faux pasAre these insurmountable problems? Maybe not, but IMHO Netflix didn’t do their homework when researching the name they chose to do business under. When I deal with a client that is looking to brand themselves online, developing a suitable name is only part of the challenge. Making sure that you can brand that name on the social networks is paramount.

Netflix has the option of buying those accounts from their owners (lucky owners), but that could be prohibitively expensive for companies with fewer resources. Better to find a name that is available for your domain and the related social media sites. If nothing else, Netflix should have approached those owners (silently through an intermediary) and acquired the accounts prior to making their public announcement.

Whoa boys – slow down!

It seems that Netflix is moving so fast that they are making a number of faux-pas of late. They just came under a lot of heat for a pricing announcement that wasn’t received well by their customers.

Don’t misunderstand my intentions with this post, I love Netflix and was a customer of theirs for many years. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous to assume that my advice is better than what they are receiving from their marketing team. My comments are geared to businesses facing similar decisions.

When you are choosing a domain name to brand a company, service or product, do your homework and ensure that the social media sites can support the marketing effort with accounts and channels that are also available. Replicating your brand name with Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites will make the marketing effort easier and create more awareness with your audience.

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SEO Silver Bullet?


Is there a shortcut to Google success?

As you might imagine, the work I do for clients covers a broad spectrum.  A basic project typically involves research to establish the most popular keywords associated with the company’s products or services.  That is usually followed by a domain name research, and then configuring the domain, installing the blog, adding email addresses and other one-time set up tweaks.

Once this setup work is done and the website and/or blog are configured and optimized I will then meet with the client and show them how to use WordPress and manage other aspects of their domain.  I encourage all of my clients to buy my book, SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide, not because I need the $10, it’s because everything they need to know at this point is detailed in the book.

Additionally, I go to great lengths in the book to explain what they need to do and why these things are necessary to get traction online.  I also cover the basics of WordPress usage and optimization, which will serve as a great reference source as they assume management of their website.

The project I just described is something I do for clients who are looking for someone to help them get started.  As a result, once this has been put in place my relationship with the client usually ends…temporarily.  Unfortunately, people who hire me to provide this “starter package” often contact me again a few months down the road.  Their questions or pleas for additional assistance are usually the same.

I heard from two such clients this week, both asking me virtually the same questions.  In essence they wanted me to tell them how they could avoid all the hard work and jump to page one on Google.  At this point, I usually ask a client if they have read my book and followed of my instructions.

No doubt you can guess their response.  Their negative reply is usually followed by a number of reasons that include their busy schedule, commitments, this lousy economy and a host of other excuses that quite honestly are all valid.

The problem with starting from scratch is that there is nothing to compare it to.  In other words, if a person had a website and it was generating sales or business leads and website disappeared for some reason, you would know that the work involved in rebuilding had a payoff equal to X sales dollars or X business leads.  Justifying the time and work required would be much easier.  When you are starting from scratch the big unknown is how much work and time will be required before you start seeing a return.

What usually happens during this building phase is that those things that we know generate business tend to require more of our time.  The end result is that the new website or blog and the effort required to manage them loses priority.  The client, like the rest of us, has only so much time they can devote to an additional project, and this is usually when I hear from them again.

My schedule does not always permit me to take on a new client (or an old client for that matter) but there is one suggestion that I give to all clients.  Take my book and give it to your receptionist, secretary or hire a college kid and tell them to read the book and follow my instructions.

SEO requires time and effort to implement. 

Social Media marketing demands interaction and personal involvement. 

There is no silver bullet or way to cut in line and land on page one of Google search results.  However, if you follow my blueprint you will obtain your objective.  It requires time and involvement, but the payoff he is exactly why you contacted me in the first place.

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