Have you been thinking about starting to blog? Ready to move your existing blog from TypePad or Wordpress to a hosted blog on your own site? We’ve done a lot of blogs and Wordpress is our favorite. See below how we can get you up and running on your own Wordpress install in less than a week!.
Basic
You choose a Wordpress theme you like and we’ll take it from there! This is perfect for somebody who already knows Wordpress and knows it’s time to move Wordpress to their own domain.
Set you up on *Wordpress friendly hosting
Help you secure a domain name and transfer it if necessary
Configure your server and install current version of Wordpress
Install Widgets and Plug-ins to improve search engine optimization, fight spam and enhance comment and sharing abilities for your users
Basic Plus
This is the version you want if you’re moving a blog from another service onto your own server. Like the package above, find a theme you like and we’ll install it or we an recommend appropriate themes for your needs. We’ll need access to the old blog and the new server.
Move blog content over and create necessary user permissions (if necessary)
Help you secure a domain name and transfer it if necessary
Back-up of existing blog (if necessary)
Set you up on *Wordpress friendly hosting
Configure your server and install current version of Wordpress
Install Widgets and Plug-ins to improve search engine optimization, fight spam and enhance comment and sharing abilities for your users
Free access to tutorials for Wordpress common tasks to get your on the right track
1 hour of phone support
Custom Wordpress Design and Install
Need a little more than an off-the-shelf theme? No worries, we can build a custom design or leverage popular themes like Thesis and Headway to get you the best Search Engine Optimization benefits as well as a theme that will be easy to keep up-to-date year after year. We can build custom code or install a suite of plug ins and scripts to add dynamic content to keep your site fresh and vital. What do you need your blog to do for you? We can help you get there.
Contact Janet for details and pricing on custom designs, code hacks and installs.
Blog Evaluation
Not sure what you need to do to build traffic, attract readers, or fine tune your search engine find-ability? A blog evaluation can make a huge difference and help you fine tune your blog for the best possible performance. We’ll look under the hood and recommend tweaks and plug-ins to help you run more smoothly, ways to get better search engine optimization and build your readership.
*Hosting is additional. We recommend Lunarpages, Media Temple or Dreamhost and we can walk you through step by step (it’s easy, trust us!) or do it for you for a small additional fee. Average hosting fees range from $100-$200 per year.
It’s the end of the year (almost) and a good time to review your online marketing efforts to see if what you’re doing online is really working for you, find all those orphaned social media accounts and make sure your messaging is fine tuned for the new year. It’s time fore a website audit.
Web sites.
Check to see that those dead campaigns and micro-sites actually got removed from your web sites. A few Google and Bing searches are a good place to start. Then look into the site directories (or have your web team do it) to ensure there aren’t any orphaned pages laying around sucking up your SEO juice and giving the wrong impression. If you’re not using them anymore put in a re-direct to point the incoming links to a more relevant location and delete the old page. Is the look and feel getting dated?
Domains.
Are all your domains up-to-date? Have you reserved all the domain names related to your business? Don’t forget the .net, .me .biz and .tv domains. Even if you don’t use them now you can point them to your main domain. Who’s the admin contact on the site? Is all the registration information up-to-date and stored somewhere you can find it? (That doesn’t mean a post it note on your monitor either).
Social Media Sites.
Have you reserved your company brand on the social media sites you need to be represented on? Are all the profiles sending a consistent message? Mind you, your messaging should be tuned to the style of the network, but you still need to check and make sure it’s on point. Are there consistent links to important information? Take the time to update pictures and evaluate which networks are getting the most of your energy and which need a little more love.
Search Engine Optimization.
Review your current strategies for SEO. Are your keywords still relevant? Has the phrasing or positioning of the company changed? Check for Alt and meta tags as well as your site map. Has it been updated lately? Do some searches and see how this year compares to your search engine rankings from last year.
Newsletter and Emails.
Been meaning to delete those accounts that bounced from the last 12 newsletters? Get to it because it’s messing with your open rates. Before you send that holiday promotion or greeting letter clean up your list and make sure it’s up-to-date. While you’re at it take a look at your newsletter and make sure the look and feel reflects your brand well.
The Social Media Coaching Center is our newest project and we are very excited to see it launch at last. Completely built in our favorite blogging platform (Wordpress of course!) the site offers everything from tips and tricks about social media strategy to step by step tutorials to use the tools and networks efficiently and to the best effect.
Janet Fouts hand-picked some amazing social media coaches, consultants and practitioners to help you understand what social media is and how to use it for business without getting bogged down in the details.
The site is your one-stop shop to really learn about social media and online marketing and the content is top-notch. No matter whayt your learning style, you’ll find something here of interest.
In addition to the content on the site Janet will be doing weekly call in shows with social media and on-line marketing experts where you can ask any questions you have about social media, social media networks or social media coaching and get answers. She’s even offering to build tutorials or videos to demonstrate her answers!
The site is in response to the many questions that came up while Janet was writing her book, Social Media Success! which just came out this week. The book gives you the strategy to make your social media efforts successful and the website gives you the tools and techniques to use to implement it. All and all a perfect couple! So, what are you waiting for? Check out the Social Media Coaching Center while it’s still free!
Our social media coach Janet Fouts just posted a very interesting article on social media measurement in the IABC newsletter. We’ve always held that you can’t hold your social media presence to one metric or the other, but that the important thing is to figure out what your goals are, how you will measure success and then determine what tools and strategies will reach your goals. However, people still insist on having metrics.
The debate continues. Recently we’ve had a lot of discussions internally and with others in the field about setting expectations. When do you expect to see return on the time invested in creating long term relationships? One of our clients pointed out that she often spends 6 moths to a year just to gather data, segment the market and determine the goals for a particular marketing campaign. Then it may take another 6 moths to a year to see the carefully created alliances blossom into measurable return. Yet people seem to expect that a social media marketing campaign will happen faster because the reaction to a particular post or video can happen so quickly.
the thing to remember here is that those times when you get a big hit in social media seldom sustain the interest. These days the attention span is short and the consumer moves off after the next big wave in a heartbeat.
So, what to do? Build lasting relationships with the knowledge that you’re not in “this” for the short haul. You are building long term programs to help increase communication of your message and turn your faithful friends, followers and readers into evangelists. Your virtual sales force.
While we invite you to discuss your campaign with us (well, Janet actually), we ask you to be realistic in your goals and to believe us when we tell you the truth about social media instead of what you’d maybe like to hear.
Social media is hard work and it takes a committed team to build trust in their relationships. That doesn’t happen quickly, but we firmly believe that a relationship based on trust and sharing information will reap bigger rewards than any flash-in-the-pan campaign.
We’re very excited to announce the site we built for The Dining Room at the Langham has won a Magellan Award for 2009! The Magellan Awards received entries from top travel organizations and professionals worldwide, and to be selected a Magellan Award Winner is a tremendous achievement and showcases the high standard of excellence maintained by The Dining Room at the Langham within the travel industry.
Tatu Digital Media created the website as well as a Wordpress blog and Twitter presence for the restaurant and Janet worked with them as a social media coach. The site showcases Chef Michael Voltaggio’s cuisine (Yes, he’s the one from Top Chef!) and The Dining Room’s elegant ambiance with beautiful photography.
The Hess Collection is one of our favorite websites, and it’s just had a re-birth of sorts. We converted the site to offer better SEO, ease of updating with Contribute and heavy use of includes and PHP to make it easy to update the ever changing variety of wines that is Hess Collection. We also used some Ajax to spiff up the section for the amazing art collection housed at Hess, complete with an audio tour with information on each piece. Check it out.
Several clients have recently reported their emails being added to blacklists and blocked from the major servers and other events that severely hamper their ability to do business. One client had her IP address blocked by 6 different blacklists and was unable to send email through any of her accounts.
So what do you do? First find out if you are on any of the black lists. You’ll need to know what your IP address is. Go to MXToolbox.com and find the IP for your MX record. Then use their tool to quickly search and see if you are coming up on any of the blacklists or use BlacklistCheck.
If you are on a Blacklist from ATT, Earthlink or Netcom you can send an email to one of their users and you’ll get a "bounceback" message. Simply follow instructions in the email to get added to the whitelist and removed from the blacklist.
Other services like AOL and Cox are tougher and you may have to work with your hosting provider to get the situation resolved. If you’re on Lunarpages (as I am) you can email support and ask them to intervene for you. Lunarpages has been great about this for me. Often times it’s not your actual account that is the problem but another user on the same server and your hosting company may have to deal with that individual to stop whatever they are doing that got you blacklisted in the first place!
Be patient and persistent. Some services can take weeks to take you off the blacklist and there’s not much you can do about it but wait and keep bugging them. It’s a good idea to have a back up email on another server just in case you need it.
If none of the above works, here’s a good list of things you can do to get off blacklists with specific information on each of the major blacklists.
MXToolbox also has a free monitoring service that will alert you if your server goes down, you get blacklisted and to generally monitor server performance.It’s worth it to at least know why your emails aren’t being answered!
I know, I know, most of the social media stuff has been going on on my personal blog at JanetFouts.com but I thought I’d post this one here just in case you missed it. I’ll be putting on my social media coach hat for a Social Media Bootcamp on August 17 in Sunnyvale to do some of the hands on work I’ve been wanting to do to really help people get social media and put it to work for their business. The cost is only $41 if you sign up before August 1st, so get over there and sign-up!
For the past 35 years, Dr. Dorothy Riddle and her team at Service-Growth Consultants have been working in over 80 countries and with over 30 service industries on strengthening the global service sector, the quality of services available in communities, and the ability of individuals to be of service.
We’ve just re-launched their website as a blog in order to take advantage of the SEO qualities of Wordpress as well as to make the wealth of content on the site more accessible. Dr. Riddle will be posting her thoughts on service and personal growth on the site in preparation for her book, to be published soon.
Have you been thinking about starting to blog? Ready to move your existing blog from TypePad or Wordpress to a hosted blog on your own site? We’ve done a lot of blogs and Wordpress is our favorite. See below how we can get you up and running on your own Wordpress install in less than a week!.
For the past 35 years, Dr. Dorothy Riddle and her team at 
