The Wonders of WordPress

There is a lot more to WordPress that meets the eye. Whether you are looking for a personal blog to express your thoughts or a business site to build your brand, WordPress is a convenient platform to look towards in beginning this endeavor. Though this may be surprising to the Average Joe, WordPress is actually an extremely powerful (not to mention free) web-building platform that can be used as a blog, website, content management system, or anywhere in between. From the beginnings of WordPress in 2003, it has grown into a highly developed, robust, and user-friendly platform that allows for “thousands of plugins, widgets, and themes” to be integrated to a WordPress site (http://wordpress.org/about/). This is due to it’s Open Source nature that permits anyone with the pertinent skills to create their own tools and themes to customize their site however they want. And because WordPress is Open Source and free, it means new functions are added or improved upon constantly and are easily available to the public. This is perhaps one of the most important aspects of WordPress because it enables the average-user to build a customized site quickly, inexpensively, and with little difficulty.

WordPress is constantly evolving as a result of its strong Open Source community who is always innovating to drive more functionality across the platform. With approximately 1,400 themes and 15,000 plugins (Devious Media 2011), it enables users to easily develop a site customized to their brand and functions specific to their business. Plugin examples include registration/invoicing, shopping carts, photo/video galleries, to name a few – if you think it, the likelihood is that it is out there and if it isn’t, some one can develop it for you (Byrne, MKTG486, October 25, 2012). WordPress can handle the traffic and functionality from a simple blog to a full on e-commerce website, which is why it is a great platform to use at any point in a company’s lifecycle. Their sites are easily scalable, so if it’s a new, large, or rapidly growing business, WordPress will readily be able to meet the functional demands required by both creator and user. Themes are interchangeable, and done so without have to shut down the site for maintenance. A new theme can be introduced without compromising the integrity of the site, or any of the content currently published. Furthermore, due to it’s Open Source platform, the creation, customization, and maintenance costs remains relatively low as there are a large number of developers constantly saturating the marketing with new additions.

Using WordPress as the central hub for all your social media tools will be very effective at driving more traffic to the site. The WordPress platform is truly a content management system as its ability to double as both a website and a blog, which allows for key words and phrases to be easily detected in a centralized location. And the more you blog, post updates, and feed more information into the web, the more chances a “search” will trace back to your WordPress site (Professor Atkins, MKTG486, October 25, 2012). So, by having all your content managed and contained across one platform, you open yourself up to more Search Engine Optimization opportunities. It will also make cross-promotion to other social media platforms much more fluid as there are readily available plugins that are easily integrated. “Blogs offer the best opportunity for sharing thoughts and information, so use other, less content-heavy platforms to promote the deeper ideas found in blog posts” (p. 96, Barker, Barker, Bormann, Neher, 2013). WordPress creates seamless integrated marketing communications by being able to connect across other social media platforms providing ease and consistency of communication.

The versatility and ease-of-use of the WordPress platform is what makes it so popular. As the world’s fastest growing web publishing platform, many people are realizing that moving towards WordPress as a one-stop-shop for many of your web and social media needs is the way to go. And because it is so easy to use, anyone at any technical skill-level will still be able to contribute and add content to the site. Once the site is developed through incorporating themes and plugins, knowledge of coding is unnecessary, as content will still be managed in the simple WordPress backend. This significant advantage allows for businesses to be quick to post updates and stay relevant without having to wait for their web-developers to add content for them. WordPress fully empowers users to be able to manage the content themselves.

It’s reassuring to know that large companies (and in very different industries) such as CNN, Mashable, and UPS are using WordPress as their web publishing platform (www.matmon.com/resource-blog/website-design/ten-companies-and-sites-using-wordpress/), and it further demonstrates that although free and easy to use, WordPress is a sophisticated enough to perform a variety of uses. Along with its ability to post blogs and to aggregate all your content into a centralized location, WordPress also tracks metrics, which provides insight on what is buzzing and trending. And with its user-friendly and ever-evolving platform, it’s no wonder that 14.3% of the top million websites out there are built on WordPress (Devious Media 2011).

Social Media Then and Now

Contemporary social media has grown into a worldwide phenomena in these past few years. Originally, social media was viewed more as an online activity geared towards leisure and essentially “killing time”. I remember when Facebook had just came out and I was lucky enough to be attending one of the select schools that it rolled out to. But even before Facebook, I was a member of Friendster and Myspace. And before that there were sites such as Findapix and blogs such as LiveJournal. I never would have imagined that social media would be such an integral part of our society and culture as it is today. And I definitely would have never suspected there would be a major in social media! In addition with Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and many others, we are constantly exposed to the social media on a daily basis. Now, it is a main part of our lives, whether it is personal or business. Heck, we probably don’t even go a day without hearing or seeing the word Facebook or Twitter.

It is now our main medium of communication within our network of friends and family. We share things with one another through social media. Discover breaking news through social media. Interact and engage with others through social media. We learn from one another through social media. It is, by far, our most convenient way to collect information. From a business standpoint, the opportunities are endless. There is now more investment in marketing and advertising across social media and is likely to be a more fruitful investment than conventional means of advertising such as television or radio commercials, and print ads. Through the collection and use of information derived from social networks, business are better able to target not only their audience, but their message.

If there is one thing that social media has done, it has changed the entire way we obtain and share information. Don’t believe me? Check out reddit and Quora.

Tips For Dealing With Difficult Clients

Working with a variety of clients takes patience, and a general understanding that you and another person may not see eye-to-eye on the same things although working towards the same goals. Here are a few words of advice based on personal experience working with select type of clients:

Mr. I’m Not Sure What I Really Want – These type of clients probably have ideas shooting from their brains left and right, but never focus their thoughts. What you should do is get a general feel for the direction they’re going, and hone in on that and roll with it. Of course, make sure it’s a solid plan. This client needs someone to implement his vision.

Ms. I Don’t Know What I Want, But It Isn’t That – This is the evil counterpart of Mr. I’m Not Sure What I Really Want. These are exceptionally difficult clients to work with. These clients tend to be a “No-Man” where they just like to say no to say no. Again, try to get a general feel for the direction they’re going. You want to make them think they thought of the great idea.

Mrs. I Care So Much That It Hurts – These clients are interesting. These are the clients that make you say to yourself “why am I even here?” These clients tend to have type-A personalities, and perhaps control issues. When working with them, provide them with solid reasons as to your approach. If it’s a good idea with a solid foundation, there should be no reason they would say no. These clients need reassurance and an explanation.

Mr. I Don’t Really Care, Just Do Whatever You Want – These clients can either be easy to work with or frustrating depending if they like the end product. My suggestion on approaching these type of clients is to keep them in the loop throughout the process, even though they may not seem to care. Ask questions and feedback from them to ensure they are actually looking at what you’re producing for them so there aren’t any last-minute changes or roadblocks down the road.

Mr. Everything Is An Emergency, Mrs. This Won’t Take Five Minutes?, Ms. Lurker, Mrs. We Don’t Have A Deadline – Oh, Wait, Yes We Do And It’s Tomorrow, Mr. I Needed This Done Yesterday, Mr. What’s A Weekend – What you’ll need to do with these difficult clients is to clearly set their expectations. Again, clients don’t know how much work is involved – that’s why they hired you. Part of your job is to set their expectations so it falls in line with the actual level of service and at the speed which you will deliver. Ignorance can lead to many issues, so continually communicating and setting expectations will be key in dealing with these clients.

How To Make Your Company Indestructible

Create your own path!

As with all things in life, you want to be the creator of your own path. Always look to have a strategy, a vision, and a plan. And focus! When marketing your brand, know what your brand represents  and stay true to that. Don’t allow yourself to succumb to outside influences or conditions that may potentially weaken the control over your future. Your brand is what sets you apart, so living up to it is important and so is maintaining independent thought and action. Be unique and stand out because although conforming to trends is simple enough, it will eventually die out.

Maintain Your Excellence!

It’s great to see companies growing rapidly, but it’s possible for companies to lose control of their future by growing too fast. But how? Simply because the company was expanding faster than it could maintain a solid commitment to excellence. Its success was sinking the boat. It’s important to remember to focus on operational excellence, especially in times of growth. You want to ensure that operations are continuously running smoothly. This means finding the right people to do the right jobs, and well… to do them right. If you have a good thing going, you want to continue on that momentum and not begin to put the interest of sales in front of the interest of your customers. If you start putting sales before the customers, eventually there will be no more customers to sell to.

Always Provide Value

The reason why you’re in business is because you provide some type of value to people. This is important. Always remember to provide value. Do what you can to control any processes that have a direct influence over your customer’s perceptions of quality and value. If people perceive that the quality and value of your products is high, they will be more inclined to buy it. So continually innovate and evolve your product in order to bring something to the market that is different from the competitors.

Your Biggest Competition is Yourself!

It’s always good to have a benchmark to work towards and passed, but realize that the biggest competition is yourself. Always push and work beyond the current performance levels because that is what will drive success. Don’t rest on your laurels! Continually try to improve processes, build value, and make your tomorrows better than your todays.

Why You Must Integrate Analytics

The Internet, in its basic function, is just a platform in which data is collected and stored. Around the World Wide Web, data is being constantly collected, stored, and recycled. Knowing this as marketers, it’s in our best interest to utilize this data to our advantage using data analytics. What is analytics, though? Analytics is the “discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data.” For us, analytics is basically obtaining insights and practical uses through the collection and analysis of data.

How Google Analytics works:

There are four main components to the analytics tracking process:

• Collection collects user-interaction data.
• Configuration allows you to manage how the data is processed.
• Processing processes the user-interaction data, with the configuration data.
• Reporting provides access to all the processed data.

According to Google Analytics, their platform “lets you measure user interactions with your business across various devices and environments” and “provides all the computing resources to collect, store, process, and report on these user-interactions.”

Why are analytics important?

Analytics are important because they can help provide valuable insight on interactions across your website, blog, or social media platform. Analytics open up various opportunities to gain insight on user interaction and engagement that you wouldn’t have without tracking this data. It better allows you to gain insight into your audiences’ behavior. For instance, which pages on your website are getting the most hits? If there is a particular page on your website, or a particular social media site that gets increasingly more hits, then you should:

1. take the time to understand why this particular page/social media site is getting more hits. Is it the content that’s making the page popular? Is it a video? Picture? Or why is your Facebook account getting so much more traffic than your website? Is it due to the social media aspect of it? Try to determine what it is so you can attempt to replicate it in the future. In a sense, it is providing you a template to start from.
2. strategically embed information into this particular page/social media site as this is where most of the traffic is going. This will make it easier for you to “sell” whatever you are selling (beit information, a service, or product) if you put important pertinent information on these pages. For instance, with Facebook Insights (analytics), they can provide user-data for any interaction there is with your content. They can provide psycho- and demographic information so you gain a better understanding of your audience. See image below.

Tip: You may also want to add an action-item of some time to further promote your business. Either through having them opt-in onto your email list, or having them share a page on their social media networks will allow for further engagement opportunities.

Traffic! > Leads! > Sales!

There’s a general, very basic sequence to convert prospects to leads to sales and it is the following:

Traffic > Leads > Sales

Using this simple sequence, you can see that if you can increase your online traffic you can get more leads, which will then make it easier to convert to sales.

Traffic – this is important because the more traffic you get, the more leads you will get, which in turn means more opportunities to convert leads into sales. How do you gain more traffic? Create content! Content pertaining to your business, content that is interesting and useful, and content that demonstrates that you are a knowledge leader in the field. By sharing content, you can drive more traffic to your site. This can be done through your blog, Facebook, and YouTube.

Leads – once you gain more traffic, the next move is to turn them into leads. You want to retain their attention by building a relationship with them and giving them more useful content. This is where you want to have your audience ‘Opt-In’ to your business. This is where you want them to join your mailing list in order to provide them with more content and promotions. If you don’t have a mailing list, then you can have them “Like” or “Follow” you on Facebook and/or Twitter so you’re able continuously feed them information. A good technique is to provide them something upon opting in such as free research information and special tips.

Also, you will want to be strategic about this, so placing opt-in opportunities throughout all your website and social media platforms is key. You will want to have an opportunity for people to opt-in on your landing page as well as your about page as those are the pages people visit the most, so you will want to make it as simple and seamless as possible for them to opt-in. You may also want to look over your analytics and place opt-in opportunities on other high-traffic pages.

Sales – this is the last component of this sequence and the most important. If you gotten to this point, you want to make the sale and you want to clearly communicate value. This can be done by giving even more info to demonstrate that your business can provide value. A smart way to do this would be to create a webinar. By creating a webinar, you can engage your users and provide them with more content. At the end of the webinar is when you can pitch your product and push to make the sale. And if you do go this route, remember to follow-up with them even after the webinar to encourage them to purchase the product and reiterate

There are various tactics you can use to gain more traffic and leads and there isn’t any “right” way, but as long as you follow the very basic and effective process of driving more traffic to create more leads to convert to sales, you will be on your way to gaining more business. And remember, throughout this process, you continually want to communicate your value!

Your Core Values Create Your Core Strategy

According to Dr. Leonard Berry’s book, Soul of Service, strategic focus is a success sustainer. A strategically focused company has a clear central strategy that defines the company’s reason for being. They know what they want to do and what they do not want to do, and this type of focus is what drives their success. This type of strategic focus, however, is unable to persist unless there are underlying core values of the business that drives it. Essentially, the core values of your business (what your business stands for) is the driving force for your core strategy. Both of these hardly ever change, it’s only the methods and tactics that you utilize that change. Your core values and core strategy for your overall business should, for the most part, remain constant through your company’s lifetime.

The Core Strategy has the following common traits:

1. Serving a specific market need rather than on marketing a specific product for that need

2. Serving underserved market needs

3. Serving their chosen markets in a superior manner

4. Targeted focus (on the core strategy)

The core strategy must be implemented through effective business design and effective execution. The core strategy is the definition of the business and is supported by a system of substrategies. Substrategies are the tactics you implement in order to execute the core strategy. As a result, priorities must be clear in designing a substrategy system that employees must execute. Thus, it is also important that everyone in the company know the core strategy and complimentary substrategies in order to sustain a consistent image of what the company is about is presented to stakeholders.

The main point is that the strategy (both core and substrategies) has two essential parts: a need-fulfilling proposition and a system of activities that turns that into a valuable market offering. It is important to know and solidify your core values because this is what your core strategy is based on. And through fully focusing and embracing your core strategy, you will be better able to serve your customers through the execution of effective substrategies.

Video Marketing, Then and Now

A decade ago, video marketing was practically a non existent medium. The only real video marketing that existed was on TV and you had to dish out a lot of dough to get air time. If you were a company that could afford air time, you still had to dish out another $250,000+ to get a commercial made. Producing commercials were not cheap, equipment and materials were not cheap, shooting and post production labor were not cheap. And to this day, professional work still isn’t cheap. Video marketing just seemed like a very hefty thing to invest in, especially if you owned a small company. It’s been known that video is an effective form of marketing, but no one could afford it.

Fast forward to present time, you are introduced to a whole new medium, and that is online video marketing. You now see a lot of companies investing more in video marketing because everything is a lot cheaper (relatively). You have YouTube and Vimeo and various other platforms to host your videos for free. You have Facebook and Twitter, social media platforms with hundreds of millions of users that will allow you to further market your video. You don’t have to pay a professional company to produce your video since now you have the accessibility to learn and  do everything in house. Video and photo equipment has gained increasing popularity in the last few years, so equipment is now more affordable due to a saturated market. Though high-grade professional cameras are stil in the thousands, one can still manage to buy a camera that shoots 1080p HD quality video for a very affordable price (in the hundreds). Actually, it would probably be incredibly cheaper to buy your own equipment than hiring someone to do an entire video shoot and produced.

With the Internet, you can download free software to edit your videos or purchase video editing software for less than a couple hundred bucks. You can research various techniques to learn how to use the camera and edit, as well as looking up how-to videos and tutorials on YouTube and various other online resources if you don’t know how to edit. You can practically do everything yourself. What one will need though, is the drive and motivation to want to learn and produce videos. Though time will be a factor in order to shoot videos and to learn to edit them yourself, but it is a necessary price to pay if you don’t currently have the budget to hire someone.

Here’s a video that company In House Goods created for Blank Booth, a company that offers professional-grade photo services for events. I personally know the cinematographer at In House Goods, which is who inspired me to write this article. He is truly a prime example of the do-it-yourself technique aforementioned. Though not traditionally trained, he has the creative mindset and the motivation to produce high-quality, amateur (though professional-grade) videos.

The Evolution of the Grocery Store

Grocery stores have been viewed widely as a commodity. That’s why there’s usually grocery stores competing  right next to each other on opposite corners of the street. I remember when I was younger that the typical grocery store sold basically the same products at about roughly the same prices. And though this still remains true for the most part, the typical big-box grocery store has evolved into more of a mega-market that not only sells fresh produce and dried goods, but now, many grocery stores have integrated many different service lines to add to the typical grocery store offering.

Because grocery stores are viewed as commodities, supermarkets need to look for other ways to provide value to customers because they can only cut costs so much before going out of business. Now there is usually a floral and balloon section, a bakery within the store that bakes fresh bread and pastries daily, a deli that makes sandwiches and already prepared hot- and cold- food, and usually a cafe or banking establishment built directly inside the store. As you can see, grocery stores have evolved into modern day bazaars that sell a variety of goods, as well as convenience, in order to provide greater value to their customers by making the shopping experience easier and more centralized.

You can see that as markets become saturated with competitors, supermarkets will need to step up their value proposition in order to provide customers with additional benefits and services for shopping at their stores. Along with the additional services mentioned before, grocery stores are also expanding their products to offer more exotic ingredients, organic and/or gluten-free options, specialty items (cheeses, meats, etc…), in order to attract more customers and make it a one-stop-shop for all their eating needs. Furthermore, certain grocery chains have become increasingly successful in recent years due to changing consumer buying habits. The need for local, home-grown and organic products have lead to the success of such grocery stores as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.

Some grocery chains are identifying areas where they can add value by adding to their goods and service offerings, while other grocery chains are focusing on underserved markets. Either way, the grocery store has evolved to make the shopping experience as simple as possible in an industry where profit margins are slim and competition is strong.

Amazon’s Superb Services Marketing

Amazon has come a long way since it’s beginnings in the 90s. Starting from a strictly online bookstore, it has grown and evolved into a multi-billion dollar corporation as a diversified online retailer selling books (its flagship product, of course), digital data (including DVDs, MP3s, CDs, software, videos, games, electronics), hundreds of thousands of retail products (toys, food, furniture, clothing, gadgets, electronics, jewelry, etc.), and a superior platform to purchase and deliver these products (Amazon.com, Kindle). Amazon’s service is fast and reliable, and their customer service is superior to many other online retailers.

So, what is the success of Amazon? They’re not the #1 online retailer just because they sell a lot of products. They’re the #1 online retail because they sell a lot of products, and do it well. They pay considerable attention to the quality of their Customer Service and continually approve upon it. One particular service innovation they provide is what is called “Amazon Prime”, which allows for fast, free 2-day shipping to membership holders. Members of Amazon Prime are also provided free access to “Amazon Instant Video”, which is like Netflix or Hulu where you can stream TV shows and movies that are in their collection of digital media.

By being understanding the immediate needs and desires of the typical online shopper, Amazon is able to identify gaps and areas of improvement in the overall online retail experience. They fully understood that their customers want a seamless online shopping experience. They also know that they want their merchandise quickly after they submit an order. This type of attention to proactively improve their Services Marketing has allowed Amazon to provide quality service to their customers, and in turn, customers remain loyal to Amazon and continue to give them business.

Amazon was able to identify areas of improvement or advantages over their competitors by analyzing:

• its supply-chain and logistics to be able provide fast and low-cost/free shipping
• its purchase and return policies to make the shopping experience as simple and stress-free as possible
• its offering to be able to provide a range of products including digital and hard goods, as well as a simple platform to purchase from (Amazon.com, Kindle)
• customer spending habits and trends to better match their preferences with Amazon products
• its customer reviews and feedback to continually improve on their systems as well as being able to remove undesirable products

These are just some of a few things Amazon does to maintain a successful and growing business. They pay close attention to their Customer Service, and always look to provide more value to their Customers. They are truly engaged in Services Marketing and make it a point to be a premium service provider even though they are an online retailer. Amazon understands that shopping online is a service and looking for new ways to provide superior service will keep their customers coming back.