How to set up wordpress

Posts Tagged ‘Blog’

If you’ve read the Google blog recently you’ll see that there are quite a few new tools being introduced to help us do our jobs better, and work more efficiently. So how can you tell which tools will help the most, and how do you find the time to learn about them all? While I can’t help you learn about everything right now, I can share some insight into a few of the tools we use most for our clients.

Google Website Optimizer

What is our motto? TEST! And how do we do it? With the Google Website Optimizer tool, that’s of course free, and very easy to use (typical for Google, I know).

What it does: Google Website Optimizer (GWO) allows you to test different versions of a page and select the elements/design that persuades more of your visitors to convert (or complete your goal whatever it is).

Types of testing:

• A/B: this allows you to test two entirely different pages (or more) against each other.
• Multivariate: this allows you to test multiple elements of a page at the same time. You are then able to distinguish which combination of elements worked best.

Tips for using it effectively:

1. Think through your test before starting – the more thought you put into it, the better off you will be. Think about the following:
   • What are the business goals you are trying to achieve?
   • What is the best strategy to test that goal?
   • What page(s) are you going to test and where should you start?
2. Determine which type of test (A/B or Multivariate)
   • A/B tests are a little easier, require less time and are used to test major design decisions.
   • Multivariate tests are more complex and will take long to come to a conclusion. If you choose multivariate – make sure you have enough traffic to the page to support it.
3. What elements do you think are impacting visitors who are converting?
   • Images
   • Copy
   • Offer
   • Headline
   • Layout
   • Call to action/buttons
4. Choose your pages:
   • Choose the page you will be optimizing.
   • Choose your conversion page.
5. Plan on taking more than 5 minutes to set it up correctly – especially the first time. Set aside an hour or so to go through the steps and make sure everything is correct.
6. You will need to install tags on the pages, so make sure you or your programmer know how to properly install code snippets. Don’t worry, the tracking code will be given to you as you set up the test.
7. Don’t run tests that will take several months to complete – there are other factors that go into play, seasonality, major news, competitor sales, etc. Aim for no longer than 4-6 weeks.
8. The key is in analyzing the data, and moving forward. Anyone can set up a test, but interpreting it is more important. From there you may need to do additional tests, but you first need to get some data to decide where to go next

Ideas of what to test:

1. Call to Action -
   • Language
   • Button vs. hyperlink
   • Button colors & shapes
2. Fonts
   • Choice of font
   • Readability
   • Color, treatment (bold, etc.)
3. Headlines
   • Different language
   • Formatting: bold, color, etc.
   • Number of words
   • Quote vs. question
4. Page copy
   • One vs. three column layouts
   • Actual copy on pages
5. Images
6. Forms
   • Long form vs. short
   • Drop downs vs. fill in
   • Language around form
   • Placement/language of call to action button
7. Shopping cart
   • Process/pages
8. Incentives/offers
9. Site wide test
   • Navigation
   • Shopping cart button
   • Tagline
   • Search box
   • Location of authority & trust seals
10. Home page
    • Main image
    • Flash vs. images
    • Headlines
    • Best sellers, featured products, new arrivals (placement as well as adding these in)
    • Copy
    • Product displays
11. Ecommerce
    • Shopping funnel
    • Check out page
    • Image of product on product page
    • Product descriptions
    • Reviews
    • Add to cart buttons
    • Cross sells

Day Parts Report

The day parts report is a new analytics report, and it is found in Analytics under Traffic Sources > Ad Words > Day Parts. This report is used to find out what time of day your campaigns are most effective, but right now it is only for Adwords campaigns. From here you can see your ad performance broken down by day of the week and by hour of the day. The Day Parts report can help you find the most profitable times of day for your ads. Then pair it with the Ad Scheduling feature in AdWords to automatically adjust your bids to capture the right traffic at the right time.

Looking at the Data:

You can view your data in the table, or by time of day. The table lists each hour of the day. Click an hour to drill down and compare each day of the week for that hour of day. Clicking an hour in the resulting report takes you to the detail report for that day and hour (for example, Saturday 10:00).

You can also replace the ‘None’ dimension on the detail report with another selection such as Keywords so you can compare keyword performance for that day and hour.

By graphing visits against transactions you are able to see how transactions increase or decrease relative to visits. To access this information, click the tab at top left of the graph to select up to two metrics at a time. View the data hourly, so you can determine the best time to increase or decrease your bids.

Important Notes:

1. You must have enabled Destination URL auto-tagging in your AdWords account in order to see data in this report.
2. The above information is applicable for ecommerce sites. If you don’t have an ecommerce site, you will need to set up lead goals in Analytics. Once you have your leads goal running, you will be able to assess the days and times that your campaigns convert the best, and make day parting decisions based on that information.

Using the Data:

Once you know the days and times that your account converts the best, or when revenue and visits increase together, you can adjust your Adwords account accordingly.

Google Conversion Optimizer

The goal of the Google Conversion Optimizer is to increase conversions, decrease CPA (Cost per Action) and improve ROI.

How it works:

Your conversion tracking data is complied, and a prediction model is generated based on that data. From there your bids are optimized, and it selects the best auction scenario based on targeting. Your bids are also adjusted to a price that will put your ad in the best situation to convert.

In order to implement conversion optimizer you need to have a minimum of 15 conversions in the past 30 days, and the conversion level needs to be consistent over recent days. Google recommends having conversion tracking running for 2 weeks or more, and from our experience, the more data you have, the better, so don’t skimp here. When setting up the optimizer functionality you will set either a max CPA or target CPA (target is the average you want to pay per conversion).

Best practices:

1. Use the optimizer with existing campaigns
2. Leave it running. The longer you have been running conversion tracking the better it’ll work.
3. Don’t make large changes when it’s running (deleting or creating ad groups). Make small adjustments only (changes in keywords, creative, or landing pages).
4. Don’t move or remove the Google tracking codes.

Advantages:

1. It will automatically adjust your bids in real time for each auction.
2. Your click value will be determined based on specific criteria (user location, user query, content site, etc.).
3. It can be a great tool for managing cost within a campaign.
4. It has the ability to improve campaigns with minimal management.

Disadvantages:

1. Some control is taken from the user.
2. Tracking needs time to adjust to major changes.
3. It could create complacency on the part of the account manager.

Recommendations:

1. Try it on seasoned campaigns that are already performing well
2. Enable tracking for a minimum of 1 month for a better performance snapshot.
3. Do not try it with campaigns that are still a heavy work in progress.
4. Make adjustments to your CPA to find where the campaign will ideally perform.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

My friend Arik Hanson started compiling a reader’s choice awards for public relations blogs last year. Arik is a smart guy and a hell of a blogger in his own right and the program was both a kind way of elevating good PR bloggers in several different categories but also a smart way to drive traffic, interest and links for his own blog, which deserves to be nominated in a few of the categories, too.

The 2010 PR Reader’s Choice Awards voting is now open on Arik’s blog. If you’re a PR person who reads some blogs, go vote. You should also go subscribe to all the ones listed for the various awards. They’re good.

This year, the people who have participated in nominating candidates have chosen Social Media Explorer as a finalist for Public Relations Reader’s Choice Blog of the Year for 2010. I’m honored to be recognized, though I’ve always shrugged off awards for blogs. Blogging is not a competition. The winners are the readers who get to learn from smart people.

But I am appreciative that a few folks threw my name into the hat. The finalists for Blog of the Year include Todd Defren’s PR Squared (which won last year, I think); Danny Brown’s blog; my buddy Mark Schaeffer’s {grow} and Gini Dietrich’s F.A.D.S. (The Fight Against Distructive Spin) blog. I read each of them regularly and am friends with three of the authors, kindred spirits with the other.

The other categories, which include some awesome blogs, too, include best Up-And-Coming Blog, Most Educational Blog and Most Thought-Provoking. You can vote for the various categories on the PR Reader’s Choice Awards post on Arik’s blog.

Please vote for the most deserving candidate. Not me.

Had a fantastic meeting with an agency here in Indianapolis who’s working to ensure their client has a solid corporate blogging strategy. They’re off to a great start and we spoke a lot about controversy and blogging. The particular blog they’re putting up discusses a subject that could draw criticism from those with opposing views.

I’ve watched several companies react to negative criticism by trying to reasonably defend or discuss their position on the opposing blog. Bad strategy. When you come to my blog to defend your position, you’re not simply debating me, you’re going to find yourself debating an army of like-minded followers who read my blog regularly.

Often, when a controversy starts on my blog, I’ll just settle in and wait. Typically, readers will come to my rescue and rip the person to shreds. This is what happens when you are provoked into taking the battle to the opposing team’s property. You’re not simply arguing with the blogger – you’re arguing with the network behind the blog. And as you argue, the attention increases… the social engagement grows, search increases and you find this opposing post on the results for your company.

Always bring the fight home. If a blogger writes about you or your business negatively, utilize your blog to respond. You need not even mention them… but a link back to their post will typically get their attention so that they see your response. Hopefully, they’ll come back to your blog and comment. Perhaps they know better! You should know better, too.

The only thing worse than a company responding directly on the opposition’s blog is not responding at all. In new media, no response is equated with hubris and a lack of authenticity. A blogger who doesn’t respond to constructive criticism is often dismissed as a fake… they’re not around to be transparent but only to promote themselves. Their company and their corporate blog lose credibility and readership.

Always bring the fight home!

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

---

Most Commented Posts

• WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection (276)
• WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection (186)
• I Canceled My Basecamp Account Today (84)
• The $1,000 Cash Giveaway – Running today until November 25th! (81)
• WordPress Plugin: PostPost (79)

We built a WordPress micro-site for Corporate Blogging for Dummies and wanted to have a section where we displayed upcoming events in the lower sidebar. The solution to do this is actually quite simple and built directly into WordPress. Within your theme, you can add a loop that only queries and displays future posts for a specific category that is only used for Future Events:

<? query_posts('order=ASC&cat=3&post_status=future,publish');
if(have_posts()) :
while(have_posts()) : the_post();
if(strtotime(get_the_time("F jS Y")) < time()) :
continue;
else: echo $post->id;
?>
<li>
<p class="right">
<small><?php echo get_post_meta(get_the_ID(), 'location', true); ?></small>
<a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
</p>
<p class="left"><strong><?php the_time("M"); ?></strong> <?php the_time("d"); ?></p>
<div class="clear"></div>
</li> <?php
endif;
endwhile;
else:
echo "Check back soon!";
endif; ?>

The query_posts method is placed just before the WordPress loop to limit the posts published to the query used. Since these are future scheduled blog posts (on the event date), you don’t have to worry about them being displayed on your core blog in your template. You may want to hide the categories from your category list, though. This can be accomplished by editing your category list in your WordPress template using the exclude option:

<ul><?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&exclude=3'); ?></ul>

We also added metadata for the post to display a location for the event. This is accomplished using WordPress’ Custom Fields section. Simply type in location for the field name and your location for the value… then retrieve the location for display using the get_post_meta command above.

The resulting site is pretty cool, with a very unique design and layout that has all the elements necessary to promote the book:

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Publish External Feeds in Your Wordpress Site (4)
• CMS Expo: A Gem Among Marketing and Technology Conferences in the Midwest (2)
• Facebook Like Button and WordPress Integration (8)
• WordPress Hacked? Ten Steps to Repair Your Blog (6)
• 5 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Site (1)

Love this video that the folks from Techpoint put out by Cantaloupe.tv:

If you don’t see the video, watch Web 3.0 on the blog.

Google is still just a search engine, only providing you dumb data indexed on keywords that match your queries. I’d really like someone to build a find engine next… I’m tired of searching, aren’t you?

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Google Webmaster Central Gets a Serious Upgrade (2)
• Local SEO starts with Google Local Business (1)
• You’ll Find Much Better SEO Copywriting Resources Than This (7)
• 5 Easy Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Site (1)
• Bing It On! (4)

Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media and mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business by Erik Qualman.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Planning to Plan the Plan for Social Media (3)
• CMS Expo: A Gem Among Marketing and Technology Conferences in the Midwest (0)
• How Well Do You Cheat? (3)
• How Much Are You Paying for Free Analytics? (1)
• It’s Never As Simple as Fans and Followers (1)

There are some great marketing blogs out there, but I’d like to believe that what we’ve put together are the best articles ever on virtually every topic. Are we the best? It’s impossible to disprove, isn’t it? Sure – we could utilize number of subscribers, followers, fans and likes to try to determine… but that’s not an indicator of best, that’s an indicator of favorite or most popular.

Stating that your company, your product or your service is the best may be one of the greatest promotion tactics ever for a few reasons:

• People believe it. People will give you the benefit of the doubt and will want to believe what you’re saying is true. Politicians learned this a long time ago… say what voters want to hear, and then do whatever you want to when you make it to office.
• It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Saying that you’re the best will become a reality when you believe it. You begin to hold yourself to a higher standard and always ensure that you stand out amongst competitors.
• It puts the competition on the defense. While you continue to reap the benefits of being the best, your competition is left trying to prove that they really aren’t in second place.

I was asked this week whether or not this was a deceitful tactic. I’m not advocating deceit and I despise politics as usual. Instead, I’m encouraging people and companies to market themselves as the best – and deliver on that expectation.

A great example of this are the Make Money Online group of online marketers. They not only promote their sites and resources as the best, they also invest heavily in creating the persona that they are the most successful people online. (Personally, I think their marketing is better than the results in investing their services… but that’s just my opinion.)

What’s stopping you from utilizing this tactic? Define what you’re best at and begin to promote it today.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

Most Commented Posts

• WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection (276)
• WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection (183)
• I Canceled My Basecamp Account Today (83)
• The $1,000 Cash Giveaway – Running today until November 25th! (81)
• WordPress Plugin: PostPost (78)

I probably don’t talk enough about the power and effectiveness of email marketing here. I should do that more often. More and more with clients I find myself recommending email marketing strategies and for a lot of reasons.

The main reason I believe in email and email marketing is that real people still use email as their primary communications method. And by real people, I mean those outside the social media echo chamber. I wax poetic on the subject today over at the Blue Sky Factory blog. For more of my thoughts, pay them a visit.

While you’re there, check out Blue Sky Factory. They are my email service provider (you should subscribe to my newsletter if you haven’t already) and I often recommend them to clients. I do not profit from our relationship at all, though they’ve been known to promote me from time to time. Like asking me to guest post on their blog. Enjoy.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Are You Ignoring Email Marketing Because of Social Media? (hubspot.com)
• Think Email Marketing is Going Away? (vendorblog.weddingwire.com)
• Best Email Marketing Strategies and Tactics of 2009 (myventurepad.com)
• When should I start with email marketing? (startups.com)
• Email Marketing Secrets (marketersdaily.com)

Attention social media marketers: number of followers is not a strong indicator of influence. Sure… it’s obvious and easy – but it’s also lazy. The number of fans or followers often has nothing to do with a person or company’s ability to influence others.

Seven Characteristics of Influence Online

1. The influencer must primarily be engaged in relevant conversations. An actor with a bajillion followers won’t necessarily mean that they can influence others regarding your product or service.
2. The influencer should engage frequently and recently in conversations about the relevant topic. There are many abandoned blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts out there. Social media requires momentum, and those who stop or even pause for a little bit lose a lot of influence on topics.
3. The influencer must be frequently referred to by others in relevant conversations. Retweets, backlinks and comments are indicators of an influencer’s ability to engage the audience.
4. The influencer must engage in conversation. It’s not enough to blast a message out to their audience, the influencer is gifted at answering peoples’ questions, confronting criticism, and referencing other leaders in the space. Passing along a link or a Tweet from a competitor isn’t bad business, it shows you really care about your audience and want to feed them the best information possible.
5. The influencer must have a reputation. Whether it’s a degree, book, blog, or a job title… the influencer must have a reputation that supports their knowledge of the subject matter with authority.
6. The influencer must convert their audience. Having a ton of followers, a ton of retweets, and a ton of references still doesn’t mean that there’s influence. Influence requires conversions. Unless an influencer can impact a person’s decision to actually make a purchase, they aren’t an influencer.
7. Influence doesn’t grow over time, it changes over time. A change in influence can come as simply as getting your link mentioned or a retweet by another influencer. Just because someone had 100,000 followers a year ago doesn’t mean that they’re still influencing today. Find the influencers with momentum as seen through continued growth.

Are there exceptions? Of course there are. I’m not pushing this as a rule – but I do wish that systems that identify and rank influence on the Internet would quit being so lazy and begin providing some more sophisticated analysis at the characteristics that really make up someone of influence.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Thanks for subscribing! download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO on us!

---

You might also find these posts interesting:

• Social Media Marketing is about the Social, Not the Media (1)
• Accrisoft Freedom: A Different Kind of CMS (0)
• Do Big Follower Numbers Really Count? (1)
• The Wicked Lies that Social Media Gurus Weave (34)
• How Well Do You Cheat? (0)