Internet Marketing Strategy

I’d like to re-address the topic of Wordpress plugins. Last time, when I shared with you my must haves for deploying Wordpress based websites, I touched on the fundamentals. What I’m going to show you today is how to make your Wordpress website soar above your competitors!

First, I must stress how IMPORTANT it is to have a MOBILE ENABLED website. If your website cannot be read easily on a web capable phone or mobile internet device, your website is CRIPPLED! You’re in a 100 yard dash and you’re JOGGING! If you’re equipped and capable enough to make your own mobile theme, the more power to you, for those of you who don’t have a designer’s or coder’s bone in your body, you have several viable options:

• WPtouch is a hybrid Wordpress theme/plugin. It allows you to pick and choose what content you want to display to mobile browsers, and based on your formatting, plops your data into a beautiful, easy-to-read, mobile Wordpress theme.
• Mobify is more of a manual tool, you kind of have to know what you’re doing, or at least have someone who does at your disposal. It has a web editor that allows you to style your mobile them yourself. Just using the default style it has after choosing your content won’t cut it. You have to work some CSS magic.
• Wordpress Mobile Edition will give your website an iPhone-like makeover. Not much room for customization here, but you can add more mobile user-agents via the settings page.

Now, this last little tidbit isn’t a plugin, but it definitely helps amp up your Wordpress. Encouraging communication between yourself and your readers is an endless task, so give them more reason to respond to you by reversing the order of comments, displaying the newest comments on top, right below your post. It’s just a simple setting change, go to your Discussion Settings in the administration area, and choose to display newer comments at the top of each page.

Remember, the internet is always changing, and so are the ways we communicate on it. Show your readers you are informed AND HAVE AN OPINION about current events in your niche, and they will be drawn to speak to you.

When it comes to using Twitter to promote a brand, a lot of people just don’t get it. Here are a couple articles I feel really hit home when it comes to using Twitter correctly. Follow these guidelines, and you’ll start to see more and more success in your Twitter campaigns.

5 Steps to Going Viral on Twitter
Copyblogger gives some bullet points on structuring your tweets in order to facilitate mass retweetage and follows.

Did Phil Baumann Just Save Follow Friday?
Follow Friday was becoming a day of random chaos, it’s about time someone set the etiquette in stone.

Twitter 101 For Business
A special guide, directly from the hoses mouth. Twitter covers the lingo, good practices, use cases, and resources for a business owner looking to dive into the Twitterverse.

Incease Your Blog’s Retweet Rate
You’re using Tweetmeme.com or Retweet.com, but not getting that many successful retweets, what gives?

And more readers means more money, and that’s never a bad thing. Here are some excellent pointers from the very best on how to proofread and play editor to your own copy. Always remember, write as much as you can, then chop away as much as you can, and you will have said what you meant to say, how you meant to say it.

Want to Write Well? Cut Mercilessly
Tim Berry talks about some of the key things he’s learned about editing from years of experience working under one, as well as years of experience being one.

How to Write With a Knife
CopyBlogger explains how to write drafts for yourself, and edit the published copy for your audience.

How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog
Having a successful blog with a real audience is not as easy as installing Wordpress and pressing the Publish button. What’s your game plan?

Sorry for the alliteration, I just had to get it out of me. Anywho, here’s a couple freebies that might be really useful to anyone in the internet marketing field.

GoDaddy.com Coupon Codes
OYH7 – $2.50 off / $7.49 for any .com registration
BTPS101 – 20% off any order of $50 or more
BTPS111 – 10% off any order
BTPS255 – 25% off any order of $100 or more
OYH5 – 10% off any order
OYH6 – $5 off any order of $30 or more
CHILL5 – 10% off any order
CHILL6 – $5 off any order of $30 or more
CHILL7 – $7.49 for any .com registration
HASH5 – 10% off any order
HASH6 – $5 off any order of $30 or more
HASH7 – $7.49 for any .com registration
GDD1101C – 10% off any order of $40 or more

Free Google AdWords Credits
Do a Google search for “free google adwords credits” and it’s the first organic link. Or, you can just click here.

I’ll be updating this as I find more super deals!

For Twitter Tuesday, I bring you a web comic from the realm of artistic internet technology professionals; one that illustrates just how drastically Twitter might intrude on our most intimate social situations.

If you want to effectively establish yourself or your company as a respectable and successful persona or entity on Twitter, then you should follow these guidelines while you tweet and follow.

Find a Twitter client you enjoy. Feature-wise, the abilities to create groups and to search the public timeline are the most desirable, so clients like TweetDeck, Mixero, HootSuite, or Tweetizen would be optimal choices.

Don’t be afraid of conversation. In short, the technical purpose of Twitter is to be able to relay messages to another person. So, don’t be afraid to write a personalized thank you tweet when someone follows you. It will give them more inclination to come back to your profile, or even possibly, subscribe to your profile for phone updates!

Measure your success. Keep track of your Twitter Grade, and always be on the look out for ways to beef up your score. Interested in learning how Twitter Grader works?

Watch and search the public timeline. This is THE best way to start conversations and meet new people! Search for hashtags and topics that are related to your realm of expertise. Answer people’s questions, ask some of your own. You’ll start to notice the floodgates have been opened, and the followers are pouring in.

Now you are on the way to being a truly successful Twitter user!

Hey guys, welcome to another installment of Monday’s Marketing Mashup, where DaftSEO brings you the latest by the greatest in search engine strategies and marketing tactics!

10 Way to Launch a New Blog With a Bang
Web Designer Depot shows us what it is to truly be prepared to take on a new blog, and what it takes to truly make a new endeavor successful.

Link Building is Faster with BuzzStream
Colin LaHay takes a look into the new Link Building CRM software, BuzzStream, and shows us how to manage our backlink campaigns.

7 Rules for Link Building in 2009
Eduard Blacquiere, also known as EdWords, gives us a couple tips for having a really solid link building strategy, maximizing the points of inbound traffic and link juice.

Well, that’s all for now, stay tuned for the next Marketing Mashup!

It’s that time again! What time, you ask? Why, Blog Comic Friday, of course!

Have print mediums really become archaic, and a thing of the past, or have they only become outdated for certain types of queries?

If you liked this comic, check out Ranked Hard for more!

Markup Heirarchy – Advantages in SEO
Soh Tanaka explains how to keep your unique, content rich content at the top of your markup, and display it to your users however you want.

16 Useful .htaccess Tricks and Hacks for Web Develoeprs
SEO friendly redirects and SEO friendly URL’s aren’t the only thing .htaccess is good for!

Live Domain Drops and Daily Domain Catching
GoDrops.com has daily domain name giveaways, as well as a constantly updated dropped domain list on the right side of their site! Be sure to follow GoDrops on Twitter to keep up with thier special freebies!

That’s all for now, stay tuned for the next SEO Strategy Round Up!

I set up so many Wordpress blogs, for myself and others, so its really easy to overlook a step or two during the setup process once in a while. Let this post be a reminder to you, readers, and myself, to add these five nifty plugins. We do want our websites to be the best that they can be, no?

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
I definitely try to remember to install this on all of my Wordpress blogs, it saves so much time when you have twenty or more blogs to upgrade when a new version comes around. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade does exactly what the name details, automatically (well, you click a button in your control panel after it alerts you a new version is available) downloads the newest stable release of Wordpress, and installs it. Perhaps we’ll see this plugin included like Akismet someday?

Live Comment Preview
Shows your readers exactly how their reply to your post will appear, in real time. Pretty neat feature that really increases the interaction between the user and your website.

WP Auto Tagger
WP Auto Tagger makes great use of the Yahoo! API to match search results against your current post’s content and provides relevant, popularly searched tags automatically. It doesn’t override any tags you suggest, either.

Nicer Trackbacks
The way Wordpress displays trackbacks to your posts from other websites is kind of ugly, and kind of not that SEO friendly. Well, don’t forget to change all that to suit your needs with this Wordpress plugin.

Most Commented Posts
Show your hottest topics with this plugin, which displays these posts in your sidebar much like the “Most Popular Posts” or “Recent Comments” sidebar items.

Don’t forget to bookmark the Five Most Overlooked Wordpress Plugins, so you don’t forget next time!