I’ve found that many marketers are overlooking lesser known techniques for WordPress Content Marketing strategy.  We’ll examine three tactics in this post, and to keep it simple, I’ll narrow down desired on-site Content Marketing goals to two categories:  engagement (visitors view 3 or more pages), and lead generation for B2B.  We’ll leave ecommerce sales aside for now, and in this post look at 3 ways to use WordPress tools to increase engagement, and so lower your bounce rates.  In a future post, I’ll cover lead generation tactics using WordPress.

Above (click to enlarge) we have added several key post categories to our "Blog" menu item to elevate awareness of available content.

Remember to Add Important Categories to your WordPress Menus

Category archives are landing pages too.  Not only does Google index them, but they also provide a gateway to important content on your site, so your tactic here is to surface links to important categories in a highly visible position.  Most content marketers using WordPress do so using a sidebar widget — but there’s an easy, and more visible way to do this.  I’ll share it with you, but first… how do you know which categories are most important to your visitors?  Analytics.

Check Analytics first to see what categories visitors frequent, but since they are likely not being promoted a lot on your site, check also for what key phrases your visitors use before visiting your site — both answers are available in Analytics.  Then, your tactic is  to use the new WordPress 3.x menu system to add categories as selectable items on a pop-down menu.

Most people only think of showing links to pages, and sometimes posts — but why not promote categories of content that you know visitors are seeking on your site?  And, when you do make sure you write a keyword-rich description that appears at the top of your categories — good themes like our Thematic-MAX framework build in the ability to do this.
TIP:  You can reword the Category Title in the Link to something more compelling — then watch “in-page Analytics” to see if your click-through rate increases.

Above (click to enlarge) are some settings with a MaxRef Widget to reveal key content.

Use Sidebar Widgets to Reveal, Engage, and Reduce Bounces

Most WordPress users know about the “Recent Posts” widget that comes standard with WordPress, but what about promoting older posts that are equally important, and for which your Analytics reports show a high degree of interest?

WebFadds has produced a great Content Marketing plugin  after considering much the same questions — MaxRef Widgets (I’d also like to give thanks to Newt Barret, co-Author of “Get Content, Get Customers” who prompted some of these ideas, originally).  “MaxRef” stands for Maximum Reference to content, and the reason we added an “s” to Widget, is that you can use as many as you need in your sidebars and widget locations — we often place one in the footer area to re-engage visitors who have scrolled to the bottom of a page, and are thinking about leaving.

We’re pleased that MaxRef Widgets has a 5-Star rating with over 4,000 downloads at the WordPress plugin repository.  Our screenshot (click to enlarge) shows an example tactic to use its various settings to reveal posts about how Landing Page Optimization helps your ROI.  Of course you can use it for a different strategy, like rotating overall posts into view so visitors may engage with less recent, but equally valuable content.

Link to searches on your blog based on Analytics Key Phrases

WordPress automatically presents a dynamically updated lists based on keywords or phrases entered into its built-in search field(s).  So the next time you write a post, here are three steps to take:

• First check your Analytics for visitor patterns including what keywords/key phrases relating to your post are popular
• Do a search on your WordPress CMS for the phrase* you decide upon.  Copy the URL that results (in your browser).
• Past that into your post using relevant text.  Here are two examples:  Content Marketing  |  Landing Page Optimization

*TIP:  Research shows that Google users are frequently typing in 2-4 word phrases, rather than just a single keyword.

At WebFadds, we develop your custom CMS solutions on a WordPress theme framework called Thematic.  There are a number of features and advantages to this approach.  Plus, we’ve added more custom functionality — the WebFadds taking it to the “MAX” touch.   This is an overview of the features and benefits of our “Thematic-MAX” themes.  See our Gallery of Recent Sites produced with Thematic-MAX, below.

Recent Sites Built with Thematic-MAX

Links to some recent work: AssociaLiving.com | ContentMarketingInstitute.com | CoffeeNutHut.com  |  SocialTract.com  | BFGL.com  |  MagPub.com  |  Campiello Naples  |  Haisman Wealth Management

Advantage of Parent/Child Theme:

WordPress allows you to develop sites as a “child” (references main theme programming) of a parent theme, so Thematic takes this idea and runs with it building its “parent” theme into a robust framework designed to allow certain strengths for designers and developers of custom child themes.  One big win?  The parent theme is maintained and updated regularly to take advantage of new WordPress core features and to keep pace with security updates.  [Right -- click image to see a full size Guide to features of  the Thematic-MAX theme framework).

Thematic Framework (Parent Theme) Features & Benefits

• Robust Community of developers who upgrade the parent theme, “Thematic” regularly and in compliance with WordPress Standards
• 13 widget-ready areas where you can place hundreds of functional components into your theme
• Built-in ability to add custom category descriptions at top of categories
• Footer text editable in backend
• Built in templates including a Blog Archives template for SEO
• Modular CSS components optimized for final styling and build of themes

You can build absolutely any website design on this framework.  Below is a short gallery of some recent sites we’ve built on it, then we’ll conclude with a list of features we build into our themes — the “MAX” part of Thematic-MAX.

Child Theme (Thematic-MAX) Features from WebFadds

• Easily create two, three and four column layouts (click to enlarge example at right) with short codes (no CSS, no Tables)
• Quickly create and use five different colored professional buttons for any important links (we recommend you test colors and placements for important “calls to action)
• Two additional widget ready areas:  above the footer, and the “crown aside” that sits on top of your sidebars
• Three Custom Page Templates:  Landing Page, No Sidebar, and No Title (does not echo page title at top, so you can create a custom headline there) templates
• Installed Custom Function for Google Fonts:  now add over 30 (and growing) Google Fonts to your themes for great looking headlines that are SEO ready (see example in gallery above for ContentMarketingInstitute.com)
• Two additional Custom Functions:  Add Twitter and Facebook details to author profiles, Register second menu for secondary navigation
• NEW in 2011:  In first quarter, we will be adding a built-in “Directory” feature with custom pages in backend, and directory page template for public sites

F.A.Q.

Do you work with other themes? Yes, but we cannot guarantee they will stay current with WordPress standards, nor can we certify the quality of their code.  Often this route is more expensive than working with our Thematic-MAX theme development.

What about paid commercial themes? Some are good, but we always recommend you start with a custom design to meet your desired business outcomes.  This way, you fit your CMS (Content Management System) to your business needs, instead of trying to find a way to get desired business outcomes from a predesigned theme.  Form follows function.

Can I build any Design for my website on Thematic-MAX? Yes.

What is your CMS Development Philosophy? We stay true to the WordPress standards, and avoid extensive external programming. This means that you can expect to watch WordPress videos on best admin. and Content Management techniques and find everything set up to standard in the back-end of your CMS (Content Management System).  We also minimize and cut out expensive external programming that can add to your load time, and upgrade costs.

What do you think of Flash? Drop it.  You can find ways to do pretty much the same thing (see slideshows at sites above) without alienating millions of potential viewers on iPads and iPhones, plus all those who fail to upgrade Flash in their browsers.

What do you offer for Maintenance? We have a an “UpGrade and Service PAK” that includes upgrading the parent theme.  You should note that design changes to your custom Child Theme and related custom programming will be estimated and charged separately.

Web Engagement, Social Marketing Tip, and Visual Optimization

On today’s web, it’s all about Engagement and Connection.  In fact, Connection now trumps Content (see why in Why Content is King No More)  as the most important part of your marketing tactics.  Connection to who?  Prospects, leads, and customers.  One on one.  Think of this like what your sales people do at a tradeshow.  They engage booth visitors and get to know them.  People buy from those they know.  That’s the promise of Social Media, and many national brands have already proven this — two times in a row, SouthWest Air has had its highest ticket sales ever, from promotions that only happened on Twitter.  So… what is your “1:1″ marketing strategy?  In this post, I’ll give you some tips, tactics and techniques to help you. One big key — insights into your potential customers. Learn more about 1:1 marketing strategies and tactics from Marketing Experiments (highly recommended) – One To One Marketing.

Another new TLA — W.E.M., Web Engagement Management

Ok… so how do we engage and learn more about our prospects?  How about yet another TLA — Three Letter Acronym.  Tired as I am of TLAs, I like what this one is about… WEM — Web Engagement Management.  In a great post on the “5 Pillars of W.E.M.”, writing at CMSWire, Barb Mosher identifies them as:

1. Content Optimization
2. Multi-Channel Management
3. Conversational Engagement
4. Demand Generation
5. Sales & Relationship Automation

More on each point in future posts, but the key is that all five are required for an effective Web Engagement strategy.  Read the source article here:   5 Pillars of Web Engagement Management

Social Marketing Tip with HootSuite

So, let’s look at a tactic to address two WEM “pillars”:  Multi-Channel Management, and Conversational Engagement.  Time is a scarce commodity in most MarCom departments, and especially during this time of rapid social technology change.  That’s why I like HootSuite for its team workflow and cross platform engagement automation features.  So, my tip of the week is show below — use HootSuite’s “hidden” ability to profile tweeters:

Above (click for larger view), using Hootsuite to first monitor important business conversations, we can then learn more about a prospect by clicking on their photo/logo, then clicking on “view more tweets from…”.  Use this tactic to find out how influential the prospect is, and what their major interest focus might be.  Contact us to explore ways to use this engagement tool in your 1:1 marketing strategy.

Visual Media Optimization for Your WordPress CMS

With millions of smartphones, and now over 2 million iPads sold with more “tablets” on the way, now is the right time to consider your visual media methods of engagement and persuasion on your site.  We develop successful CMS solutions on the WordPress platform and are always looking for good ways to do this, so I’m pleased to recommend a versatile way to do that — with one note of caution.  Slideshows are great visual ways to explain B2B technical concepts in a persuasive and easy to understand way.  Consider the slides we did for a recent client, Lopez Research (click small image at right to see site).  This is a simple and effective way to present what you do in a way that engages emotions.  Remember — everyone makes a buy decision based on emotion.  What’s the caution?  Well, right now Apple has said they will not use Flash on their platforms, and most slideshows are done using Flash to drive them.  We look for new emerging standards in HTML 5.0 to break through this wall soon.

Above, a new plugin offers you the ability to show images that zoom and pan, while text explains the concept pictured and gives a link deeper into your site content.

Have a Web Engagement Management challenge you’d like us to review?  Great — contact us today and we’ll do a free review.

WebFadds is an Agency specializing in CMS Websites and Business Blogs, plus Marketing techniques optimized for Connection Cycle Marketing — CCM. We focus on delivering SEO savvy, Content Management System solutions on the market-leading WordPress platform, then provide Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Landing Page Optimization services to ensure you get maximum visitors converting to prospects, leads, and customers.

In this ISSUE:

NOTE: There’s still time to save on our WordPress Service and Upgrade PAK — thru. Jan. 15th. See: WP 2.9.x Features & Upgrade Special

Best ROI for online marketing in 2010? ::::::::::::

We have a new poll at LinkedIN of C-Level Marketing Managers to find out what popular marketing methods they believe will be key for ROI this year — you can take it too: BEST ROI POLL . Initial results (51 respondents) are shown here (click to enlarge)… and there’s a demographic breakdown revealed after the poll is taken showing age range, company size, role and other metrics. So far, CRO – Conversion Rate Optimization – is winning, by a nose over SMM – Social Media Marketing. Did you hear that Pepsi pulled out of the Super Bowl advertising in favor of Social Media? Hmmmm. This is definitely the year for Social Media in terms of spending, but I am in agreement with the current poll stats that CRO will be best for your ROI. I’ll report more on the Poll results in a future post, but in this issue I’d like to give you some tips about each for each of the tactics queried in the Poll: CRO, SEO, PPC, eMail, and SMM.

CRO Tip: Click Heat Maps for VBO… ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Above, (click to enlarge) the click heat map for WPsiteHosting.com shows what elements draw clicks and gives some commentary.

Ok, get ready for another TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for this issue’s tip on optimizing — VBO… Visitor Behavior Optimization. How many times have you been in an internal discussion about what color a box or link should be on your page so more people would click it? Everyone’s got their opinions — even the pros, and often just about everyone’s opinion is wrong — even the pros. So why not ask your visitors? WebFadds has been doing just that and learning some very good things about what visitors do at our site and client sites. Some methods include Click Heat Maps (click screenshot to see one for WPsiteHosting.com — where a lot of our clients have their sites), recorded visit tracking (no audio), and usability testing with transcript and recorded audio. We’re building this in for original design, redesign, and landing page optimization — read more about it here, and contact us for a quote.

SEO Tip: Title & Primary Terms:::::::::::::::::

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org (excellent site with tools to review your web performance), has done a couple of studies in the US and in Europe that point to a key tip for SEO workers: make sure your primary key phrase is in the FIRST part of your Title Tags. Below is a screenshot of an SEO plugin we install as part of our Max-SEO service with a key phrase highlighted in the Title Tag Entry field. To this advice, I would add that the most successful results we see with our clients come when that same primary key phrase (don’t try to use too many keywords/terms in a shotgun approach… instead, rifle in on one phrase for which you want to rank well) is used in seo-savvy copy that still reads well. This relates to the part of Google’s ranking formula called “density” — the number of times a phrase occurs on a page or in a post.

SMM Tip: Listen to Local Tweeters :::::::::::::::::

Above, Nearby Tweets is "tuned" into local talk about SEO.

Use NearbyTweets.com (version 2 BETA adds some great features including saved searches, search radius and more), to find people in your city talking about what you sell. Engage them. Meet them. Do so from a social, or soft-sell standpoint. Don’t begin by pushing what you have to sell. Just talk to them, and listen. In sales, there was a strategy called “consultative selling” that was very popular early this decade. It still works. Listen and wait for them to ask your advice. Then consult. Speaking of consulting, contact us to schedule a SMM training session with your sales and marketing team.

PPC Tip: Quality Score & LPO :::::::::::::

Ok… here’s another TLA for you — LPO, that’s Landing Page Optimization. I actually think that PPC is getting overlooked in the Poll — it can offer great ROI, but there’s a factor in adwords, Google calls your Quality Score that helps determines your placement, per click costs, and so your ROI. Unfortunately we see a lot of clients who are unwilling to give control of the Landing page advertised in adwords ads over to your marketing team. There’s a longer explanation to it (see our colleague Tom Hale’s excellent post on the subject), but to think about why it’s important, remember that Google wants people who click on ads to find highly relevant information, and there are ways to make that happen. One way, is to make sure the key phrase in the Ad headline is used prominently on the landing page. Of course, PPC, like organic SEO, just gets you targeted visitors — what they do after they get there is the other part of LPO. Contact us if you’d like to increase conversions on your landing pages.

eMail Tip: Subject line length :::::::::::::::::

Finally, here’s a tip on the other marketing tactic that’s languishing in the Poll — email Marketing. Email marketing can and should be optimized and tracked in Analytics for best ROI. Mailer-Mailer, an email marketing service provider, has created an excellent report with recommendations on Subject Line Length, Subject Line Content, Personalization, Bounces, and Click Rates. One tip… emails with subject lines of 35 characters or less get more opened more. And the best part of this tip… is the report is free for the download, here: Mailer Mailer Report. Pretty good marketing for Mailer Mailer, huh?

So, I’ll leave you with the challenge question: What are you offering for viral reports, ebooks, and white papers that can be tracked and shown to bring you more business?

WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

In this ISSUE:

A Big Wave is coming ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Hail, Google: All of information, in the all knowing cloud mind, in the all present psyche of the ever inquiring consciousness of the googlezonification of the world. Pardon me. I just riffed poetic about Google — evil overlord, or ultimate resource of freedom — and it’s apparent continuous march to be, well, the ONE content management system. Case in point: the Google Wave. The Wave itself is a sort of embedded chat, plus email, plus documents… plus applications. Then consider that you can take a Wave and embed it in your WordPress CMS or Business Blog. Hmmmm.

What’s the Advantage of a Wave? Above, I played a game in a Wave with four other people, where the game could be any application (ecommerce apps are coming, with real-time translation).  Now remember that Waves can be played back… for an educational advantage, and also that they can be embedded in your websites.

Hey… I have some Google Wave invitations (Wave is still in Beta-By Invitation mode) left, so email me if you want one.

Optimizer Tips ::::::::::::::::::::::::

Never Say Submit: Two of the most important things I can tell you about optimization are that it’s not just about SEO, and sometimes a change to just one tiny element on a page means more conversions of visitors to customers. Oh, and never say “submit” in your buttons. Why? Well you can take a look at the two buttons below. Guess which one 96% more people continuing in the checkout process? You don’t have to guess… vote and see the results at Which Test Won.

Note that neither button said “Submit” — click image to go vote for a winner. On, and one final rule… always be testing — WebFadds can help you… Contact Us.

WordPress News :::::::::::::::::

Two items in this edition: WordPress just won the “Best Open Source CMS” Award award  for 2009 from PAKT Publishing, beating out Joomla, Drupal, MODx, and SilverStripe — it’s come a long way from its humble beginnings as a blogging platform.

And, WordPress is adding new editing features scheduled for the 2.9 upgrade, due in early December, include some image edition tools which Content Managers will like:

Above… you can now scale, rotate, crop and align — all in the new WordPress image editor.

Twitter Tips :::::::::::::::::

Think Like a Journalist: I’ve often said that in today’s sphere online, Publishing is the new Marketing, but Marketing still equals sales. What’s that mean? It means you need to think like a Journalist first when you’re publishing, but write with conversions in mind. Conversions? Yes — an Analytics term where you can track your web efforts to see which are most effective at creating actions where your visitors “convert” to a prospect, lead or customer. One example is when a visitor fills out a form at your site, and so becomes a sales lead.

Ok… now what does this have to do with Twitter? Two things: first, you need to write short tweets that provide valuable information to your prospects/readers — just like journalists do. This might even be a question (in journalism school you learn that one of the most effective “leads” to get readers to read a story was the “question lead”). And, second, make sure your staff time spent is “ROI positive” by setting conversion dollar values in Analytics (contact us, and we’ll explain more).

A recent post on Mashable, detailed how five real-world journalists use Twitter and Social Media. You can learn from their techniques, and also remember that journalists are seeking information there, so if they use your tweets and credit you, it’s another way of amplifying your reach. Read the whole story here.

I’ll conclude with five tips to use Twitter like a Journalist:

• Instantly check sources before retweeting, by checking in forums, Facebook, etc.
• You can become a recognized expert to followers and potential journalists for interviews
• Pose a question to followers, then lead them to a poll on your site or LinkedIN that you create. Later tweet the results of the poll.
• Consider “angles” for a tweet and related blog post, the way Journalists consider angles for a story — by understanding how other people online relate to your subject matter (read their tweets)
• Remember that your “community” of readers/prospects extends beyond your blog and twitter — but be efficient by uploading a video to Facebook, then tweet and blog about it.

WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

In this Issue:

Read on to find tips, and tactics for each item… and more.

Optimizer Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

• Tim Ash, writing for Search Engine Watch, writes: “It isn’t uncommon to completely redesign your whole landing page and test it head-to-head against your original.” Are you doing this? If you’re not — you could be missing the chance to increase your “conversions” (convert visitors to leads and customers) by 23% or more — see: WhichTestWon.com:
  
  Above test increased conversions 23% for a SaaS — Software as a Service client.

• A WildWestWeb.com article on top four tips to increase conversions advises, “Your ads and your landing page copy must match.” This is a doubly important piece of advice. Important for increasing conversions, and important in increasing your quality score with Google PPC ads — a tactic which can actually lower click costs.

How much is each lead at your site worth? If you sell a service for $1000, and close one in ten leads, then each lead is worth $100 to your company. An increase of 23% would represent significant income for your company… so start watching “conversions” in Google Analytics.

We publish tips like these daily on our Twitter account @WebFadds. Contact us for your next Landing Page Optimization campaign.

WordPress Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

SEO: Consider this new plugin for your WordPress Business Blog and CMS:  SEO Smart Links.    The plugin works to improve your site’s interlinking by finding keywords in your posts, pages and comments and linking them to your other posts, pages, categories and tags.

Rich Content: Remember, publishing is the new marketing, so ask yourself how best to market your content.  Here’s an interesting new service to consider — Apture — a platform to “enhance your blog posts and articles with interactive videos, images, Wikipedia, maps and more from 50+ sources without making readers leave the page.”  We’re going to test it here at WebFadds, and you’ll see examples in our next edition.  For now take a look at the possibilities:

Above, (click to enlarge), is an example of how with one link, Apture (via a WordPress plugin), allows you to insert a YouTube video, related Twitter comments, a related Wikipedia article, and an Amazon.com related link — all in one mashup.  We like the potential here.

Twitter Tips :::::::::::::::::::::::::

Twitter Mashups keep on coming: I am continually amazed at the creativity and range of features appearing in applications that revolve around Twitter. Often, they are a concept in search of practical application. So, when you first read about them, they don’t immediately suggest a good business use. Let’s brainstorm:

TwitterCal.com – why would I want to get twitter updates automatically to a Google calendar? Well, remember that you can set and save custom searches on Twitter (right bar). Recall also that you can have any number of Google accounts each with more than one calendar. And, Google calendars can be embedded in web pages. So… let’s connect the dots:

• Pick a business event tracking message you want to show in calendar format on your site. This could be local marketing & business meetings, like SEO groups, software groups, chamber of commerce meetings, etc.
• Set up a new calendar for it in your Gmail account
• Set up your free Twittercal.com account
• Go to your Twitter account and use some intermediate level skills to refine your search for local events. Save the search.
• Do a search and use the Twittercal protocal to send an event to your calendar — (add any events by sending a direct message to gcal – ie: d gcal meeting with fred on monday, 25th of june at 9am)
• Embed the calendar into your site as a service for your readers.

TweetBurner: When marketing on Twitter (make sure it doesn’t come off as spam) use “TweetBurner” to shorten your URLs… then track how they’re shared on Twitter.

Above, Twurl will track and show you how many clicks you got on Twitter for each link you post there.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

WebFadds.com is an agency focused on CMS, Social Media Marketing, & Landing Page Optimization solutions. Contact us today for a free quote. And, be sure to download our latest Guide: “Winning Twitter Marketing Tools & Tactics”.

Twitter News ::::::::::

New Twitter Marketing Guide Available from WebFadds…

You’ve heard about it — even C-Level executives are buzzing about Twitter.  How can you make it work for your business? We’ve produced a Guide with answers, including time saving professional tools, a directory of twitter advertising services, and  links to businesses with details on how they’re making Twitter work in their company (right) — download it today.

CRM Solutions Embrace Twitter…
It’s all about relationships.

In the early 90′s I worked for an international company of some size (about 3,000 employees).  For around a year after email became prevalent — the key decision makers thought the company should not enable it.  It was a sort of bunker mentality — “too dangerous”… the competition might find out what we’re doing.  “Too dangerous”… some employees might abuse it.  Well, we know now that email has become an essential business tool… just like those “antique” fax machines.  Next, up is Twitter — it’s not “too dangerous” to use… it’s too dangerous not to use — your competition is embracing it.  And, major CRM (Customer Relationship Management) service providers are building it right in as another tool to get closer to prospects, leads and customers:

Above:  Salesforce.com builds in “conversation details” from Twitter  for your key contacts into its “Real Time Cloud”, while the Open Source CRM competitor — Sugar CRM — is integrating real time Twitter Search.

> Read more about Social Media Marketing Solutions.

WORDPRESS Attacks & Updates ::::::::::

A number of sites are reporting that WordPress business blogs and CMS installations are under attack — like this report from 9/5 at TechCrunch:  “Security Threat: WordPress Under Attack”.

We recommend you immediately update to the latest version of WordPress (2.8.4), plus install some key plugins to monitor your system and protect files.  We can do this for you for $69 on our servers (we recommend WPsiteHosting.com — an international service with great WordPress Hosting), or $199 on yours.

Here are the steps we recommend:

• Upgrade to the latest version of WordPress
• Install and configure two protective plugins for Virus Check & System Health Monitoring
• Install & configure two Back-up options (one emails backups — the other saves them at WordPressBackup.com)
• Contact your host and enable backups via your Control Panel

Take a look at how the AntiVirus plugin helps alert you to viruses:

Above, the Virus alert program has flagged a front page for review — you then check the file for suspicious code and delete if needed.

Contact us today — we look forward to helping you Optimize, Connect, and Convert.