Custom WordPress Sites

Blogging With WordPress

Almost every day I receive email from clients who want to better results from their online marketing. Normally the conversations begin with some sort of statement to me like: “I wanna get started on Facebook” to which I always respond: How’s your blog doing?

To me your blog is your home base, one of the quickest and easiest ways to share information to your audience at a place that you own and can completely control. Also, Google and other search engines love the constant stream of new content which will help with your search engine rankings as well. Blogs also give you the ability to share your content quickly & easily with all of the social networks. Finally, the statistics show that businesses who blog receive 55% more online traffic than those who do not which is just another reason why you should be blogging today.

Join me Friday September 14th at 1PM Eastern for “Blogging With WordPress.”

During this one hour webinar I will share with you how to get started with blogging as well as discuss with you some of the many great features that a self hosted WordPress site has.

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Are You Commenting Or Selling Me Something?

Custom WordPress Sites

The other day a buddy of mine sent me a message on Facebook of someone who had commented on his new WordPress Blog that he is building. He found it strange that he had received a comment as the site isn’t finished yet, and the content in the comment seemed a little odd. Over the past few months we have discussed me designing a Custom WordPress Site for him in the near future.

The random comment was made by a “Bruce” whose site domain entered had nothing to do with WordPress sites, Agentpress themes, SEO, or anything close. His site domain was a religious one. So when my friend asked me about it, I said, do you have the IP address? I had a hunch.

To look into things a little more, I asked him to send me the comment because it just seemed rather strange & awkward that someone would not only come & comment on a blog that isn’t even built yet, but to also that the comment would randomly suggest someone to redesign his site.

Here’s a screen capture of the comment:

The first thing I did was a simple IP lookup to find what I had expected. The IP address of the commenter on his post who suggested a company to do site work for him was in the same location as the company suggested. Now, I don’t know for certain that the commenter & suggested company are the same, but my gut feeling is that they are since the site that was commented on was 2,300 miles away and the company mentioned to hire does have connections to my friend through various social networks.

Now maybe I’m the only one that finds this kind of tactics really below par, sneaky, and shameful. If you feel that someone should hire you because they could really benefit from your services, then simply email the site owner and tell them. I’ve done this before with many people. Some I’ve helped by giving them solutions to fix something wrong on their site, others have gone on to hire me to do work on their site instead. But, to impersonate someone else and push your services in the comment on someone’s site is just wrong.

A common courtesy when commenting on someone else’s site is to not try & push your services, or link to something off the current domain you are visiting. When you have a WordPress site, you gather all the information needed to check where someone is commenting from. This is just another reason why having your own Custom WordPress Site can be a great addition to your online marketing strategy.

Let’s all try exhibiting a little common comment courtesy and stick to adding comments of value, not selling our products or services dishonestly.

Optimizing Your Custom WordPress Site Load Time

Custom WordPress Sites

Have you ever visited a website that seems to take forever to load? I get calls regarding this from clients that I’ve built custom WordPress sites for as well as others that have built their own WordPress site by themself.

Most of the time when the calls or emails come in, I ask for a link to their website so I can assess the situation. Many times, the problem isn’t caused by a slow or unresponsive server, but rather one of two things. The first reason has to do with plugins which I’ve touched on slightly in the past and will share more on down the road.

The second big reason I seem to come across a WordPress site, or any type of website for that matter may run slow has to do with images. As megapixels inside cameras continue to go up, so does the size of the file it creates. For example, my Canon t3i DSLR creates size that are roughly 6-7 megabytes each. If I am loading these file sizes onto a server, it is going to put a major strain on the load speed of a site. Also, the actual dimensions of the site are going to be entirely too big at around 5,000 pixels wide.

Here’s a quick video showing you how to check your images:

If your site is acting like the one I showed in the video, I would take a look at the actual image files on your site. If your images are too large, try using a program to reduce the file size like smush.it. If you have a WordPress site, they even have a plugin available that works right within your site. My suggestion is to reduce the actual size before uploading to around 1,000 pixels wide as a maximum. If it is a page where you will have several images loaded, I would reduce down to around 650 pixels.

Make this simple change and watch how fast your custom WordPress sites speed up!

Even With 900 Million Members, Facebook Is Still A Rental Space

Custom WordPress Sites, Facebook For Business

Not too long ago Facebook released it’s latest stats saying it now has over 900 million members. While this is a very impressive milestone, there is one thing I hear from people that makes me want to simply bang my head against my desk is a statement similar to the following one:

Websites and SEO are dead! They are now being replaced by Facebook.

Say what? Last time I checked, my site here is still alive and thriving and the number one marketing tool for generating income. I’ve got a fantastic Facebook page with a wonderful Facebook app that was built by my friend Mike Mueller. I update these regularly and they do help my business. But, I do not focus my energy on driving traffic to this Facebook page. Instead I try using Facebook and any other social networks that I am on to drive those readers to my WordPress site.

Why? Well, it is pretty simple. Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networks that you use are not owned by you. Even if you purchased shares in Facebook, you still don’t own the space you use there and run the risk of being shut down or deleted at any moment if you do something wrong, or get accidentally caught in a glitch of the system. It’s like renting a home. You may want to paint the walls in the house green, but if the landlord says no, you can’t do it.

Better yet, what if Facebook changes something you don’t like. Where do you send your complaint? Does your complaint get addressed in a timely manner? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never once got someone on the phone or by email from Facebook to actually speak to me directly. I was told once that in order to get a personal account representative at Facebook you need to be advertising on their platform and spending around $10,000 per month. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t have quite that type of money available.

The fact of the matter is that they are going to do whatever they want and you don’t have much say. I laugh whenever they make a change to design or features. Almost instantly a new page on Facebook is created complaining about the change that picks up a few million fans hoping that if they band together they can get things changed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen, but at least misery has company.

Shift Your Home Base

Instead of focusing all your energy on building a large following on Facebook or another social network, you need to direct all that energy and time to building traffic on your website. It’s the only thing out there that you in control of. If you have a custom WordPress site and you want to add a feature to the design, you can. If you don’t want a feature available anymore, you simply log in and delete it. It is your home base that you can claim ownership over and not have to worry about losing at any moment as long as you continue to pay for your domain registration and hosting plan.

This is where most of your time should be spent. Not on sites that could disappear at any moment.

Re-Focus Your Strategy

Here’s where I see a lot of mistakes. We spend our time trying to drive our traffic to like us or follow us on a particular network. It might work well right now, but if you put all your efforts into driving your readers all to a Facebook page that is shut down all of a sudden, they are lost the minute the page dies. Instead, if your readers are in the habit of coming to your website and your page gets shut down, the loss is very minimal.

Maybe you are thinking that I am just being negative by all this talk of pages being shut down, so let’s shift gears a moment. Unless you have a custom app on Facebook, how does someone view your products, make a purchase or even simply contact you about making a purchase? It’s virtually impossible to do so. If a consumer wants to make a purchase, they would at some point need to be pushed to a website to do so.

Your website is where your products or services can be featured. It’s where I can learn more about your business. It’s also the one component of your online marketing that has lasting power. Blog posts I wrote four year ago still bring me business today. Facebook and Twitter status rarely live past 24 hours.

So, before you begin focusing more time and effort into building a large group on a social network, or platform that isn’t your main website, realize that you are using a platform that is here today and could be gone tomorrow.

What Inspires Your Blog Content?

Custom WordPress Sites, How To Blog

Coming up with ideas for blog content on a regular basis can be rather difficult for many people. It’s one of the biggest objections I hear whenever I speak on blogging. How do you think up new stuff to write about that isn’t just a repeat of something you have already done?

During this month long challenge of 21 blog posts in 21 business days, I’ve found myself at times even pondering what to write on next. But, what I have come to the conclusion is that by using one of the four options below to inspire content for your blog, you should almost always have a wealth of content available. These are the four areas I turn to when I am trying to think of something to write about:

1. Content written by others. No, I don’t mean go copy & paste something you liked that was written by someone else. That’s called plagiarism. What I mean is go out & read content written by others in your industry. You will come across posts that you like that you can then write in your own words or make it applicable to your area.

Another thing I do with these posts written by others on a rather regular basis is use it as a underlying theme to a post. I may write what I liked or didn’t like about the other person’s post. Or I may write a blog post why I agree or disagree with a concept/idea that they shared. This is a great source of content for your blog, and can also help you learn things from time to time.

2. New Products. No matter what type of business or blog you run, there is always something new coming to that industry. Either some new piece of technology comes about or you find something that you really enjoy implementing into your business. When you find these things, they can make some really great topics for blog posts. People love learning about new things and how they might be able to use it to make their job easier. I’ve written numerous posts about things I use when building a custom WordPress site for a client and have received many comments thanking me for providing help to others.

3. Past Experiences. Getting content ideas from here can be a blessing or a curse depending on what you pick to write about. In the past I have shared funny stories of working with clients, but some that share stories can end up getting into hot water by sharing things that they probably shouldn’t have. You have to always remember to use a good level of discretion when writing content for your website as it will live on the internet forever.

But, on the other hand sharing things you have experienced and had to do in the past to reach a level of success or accomplishment can make great content for your blog.

4. Your Inbox. This last area is probably my biggest secret weapon for new blog content. Every day I receive anywhere from 10-20 emails from clients of past, current, and potential regarding all types of topics. What I realized a few years ago was that if I was receiving the same question on a regular basis from those I’m connected to, how many other thousands of people were asking the same question and looking for an answer. The video tutorials alone that I have created to answer questions related to WordPress have generated well over 3,000 views.

These are the ways I come up with content for my blog. What about you? What is your inspiration for your blog topics?