Archive for wordpress
6 Ways to Make Your WordPress E-Commerce Site Rock
Building and maintaining a great e-commerce site can be overwhelming at times as it seems there is no end to what needs to be focused on. Wordpress is a great tool for e-commerce sites just starting out. But even small sites focusing on e-commerce should follow these simple rules.
Category: CRM, ecommerce, Engagement, Marketing, sales, Social Media Marketing, strategy, wordpress, Yes /
The Marketing Toolkit for Startups On a Budget
Running marketing for a startup comes with its own unique challenges, not the least of which is maintaining a tight budget while attempting to drive a daily influx of new leads. Even fully-funded startups would be wise not to invest too much in an expensive, agency-designed website or a powerful marketing automation solution.
Category: Channel Dashboards, MailChimp, Monitoring Tools, nutshell, startup, Tools & Apps, wordpress, Wufoo, Yes /
How Safe is Your WordPress Website From Hackers and Other Malicious Attacks?
How safe is your website from hackers? Check out these security tips to make sure you're not leaving yourself wide open for a similar kind of attack. One of the simplest ways to prevent your site from being hacked and having malicious code added to your pages is to keep your WordPress installation current.
34 Gorgeous WordPress Themes for Photographers
WordPress is a powerful content management system, and for some, the foundation to showcase their photography. With WordPress, you can create a professional portfolio quickly, without compromising quality
However, with a vast array of WordPress themes available to photographers, it can be difficult to choose one
SEE ALSO: 20 Stunning Responsive WordPress Themes
When browsing themes, keep your specific requirements in mind and thoroughly research a theme to make sure it meets those. This hand-picked collection showcases a selection of free and premium themes, which can truly show off the beauty of your work Read more...
More about Wordpress, Photography, Features, Design, and Dev DesignHow One Man Used WordPress to Launch a Site Covering Hurricane Sandy
When Mel Taylor saw Hurricane Sandy coming, he saw an opportunity to launch BrigantineNow.com, a website that aggregates news focused on covering the Jersey Shore community of Brigantine, which sits north of Atlantic City.
“I covered that horrible storm from a Dunkin’ Donuts and my house in Philadelphia. Nobody knew that. I just knew where I was getting those sources from. I was gathering it all together, and I was optimizing it, putting keywords in, optimizing photos, the videos, all that,” said Taylor, founder of Mel Taylor Media, at America East 2013, a recent gathering of newspaper technology and operations executives in Hershey, Pa.
Taylor started live-blogging on Oct. 27, the day Brigantine Island was shut down due to the hurricane, to provide key emergency information for residents such as weather updates, storm surge information, travel bans, and information from the governor’s office, and more. He also crowdsourced photos showing the devastation of the storm, and constantly posted updates on Facebook. He continues to follow relief efforts post-Hurricane Sandy, as well as other news in the region.
BrigantineNow.com saw website traffic surge to more than 50,000 pageviews per day, especially when Gov. Chris Christie and President Barack Obama visited, and local residents commented often on stories.
The site’s Facebook page also saw its number of likes grow from 275 to upwards of 2,000, and subscribers for the email newsletter increased from 275 to over 700.
Taylor launched the site using WordPress because he said allows publishers to control three things: cost, process and career – it takes minimal cost, the process is easy, and if a journalist is laid off, it’s easy to start his/her own site as a freelancer.
“If you have to worry about a vendor or somebody in the newsroom or somebody in the IT department telling you how to tell your business, you’re screwed,” Taylor said. “Do you allow a guy in the press room to tell you that you can only have color here or there?”
Taylor said he started out on GoDaddy and HostGator – shared servers — before he settled on the publishing tool that’s also used by The New York Times and CVS. He recommended that publishers keep their current content management systems, but try using WordPress to launch a niche site as a first step.
“I’m not against all those CMSs like TownNews. They’re all great, but they’re too expensive and too big and too clunky to really go to work to creating stuff online,” he said.
When Taylor launched BrigantineNow.com, he said, he tried using different plug-ins until he found exactly what he was looking for. His WordPress template utilizes responsive web design, which optimizes the layout of the site depending on what device is being used. He uses a self-serve platform for business listings and advertising. Taylor also uses RSS feeds, Twitter embeds, Google +, AWeber.com for email newsletters, and SlideDeck.com to create headlines and big story images.
Even after Sandy, BrigantineNow.com continues to post aggregated information from stories, information found around the Web, and information sent directly to Taylor.
A conference attendee asked Taylor how he verifies the information published on the website.
Taylor said he makes it clear on the site that the information is aggregated or was sent in, and that he’s not sure if what is posted is true.
“It was more of a blog,” he said of the project. “The rest of the radio and TV stations weren’t doing it. We never positioned BrigatineNow as a newspaper. It was more, no one else is doing it. I didn’t go to journalism school, but I know one thing – when we live by these rules, these rules of fact and this and that, the storm is over.”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Category: America East 2013, blogging, BrigantineNow.com, Mel Taylor, Mel Taylor Media, Social Media, wordpress /
Gnip to Add Social Data From Instagram, Bitly and Reddit to Its Reports
Gnip, which licenses so-called firehose data from Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Disqus to report to brands how they are being discussed on social media, will add data from several other major social networks to its reports, the company said today.
The company will now also hold a glass to the wall at Instagram, Reddit, Bitly and Panaramio.
Gnip will suck up data from public posts on those services using their APIs and fold the data into the subscription reports it provides.
“Our customers care about every public conversation that happens online,” Gnip said.
The service will allow brand marketers to monitor Instagram posts by keyword or by geolocation. Brands will also be able to track links being shared about them using Bitly and on Reddit.
Gnip is adding Reddit’s API because the social news site is sometimes where negative stories about brands first emerge. Reddit’s 50 million active members don’t just share links; they sometimes share first-hand stories.
Instagram, a more obvious choice given the photo-sharing site’s enormous popularity, also offers marketers a precious, and controversial, gem: Location information.
“We have consistently found that our customers are eager for more social data with geotagged content,” Gnip said.
Between 15 and 25 percent of Instagram users geotag their photos, Gnip said. Gnip will also hook up to a lesser-known photo-sharing service, Panoramio, where geolocation data is more abundant. The service plots photos on a Google map based on where they were taken.
Brands already use Gnip to survey 100 billion social interactions a month. The APIs added today will deliver many more. Every second, users upload on average 463 photos to Instagram, like 8,500 images and comment on 1,000. They shorten 925 links per second using Bitly, according to Gnip.
Gnip will also deliver reports on activity on Stack Overflow, a software Q-and-A site, and Plurk, an Asian Twitter competitor.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Category: APIs, Asia, bitly, geolocation, Gnip, Instagram, News, panoramio, photo sharing, Plurk, Reddit, social apis, stack overflow, tumblr, twitter, wordpress /
Gnip to Add Social Data From Instagram, Bitly and Reddit to Its Reports
Gnip, which licenses so-called firehose data from Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Disqus to report to brands how they are being discussed on social media, will add data from several other major social networks to its reports, the company said today.
The company will now also hold a glass to the wall at Instagram, Reddit, Bitly and Panaramio.
Gnip will suck up data from public posts on those services using their APIs and fold the data into the subscription reports it provides.
“Our customers care about every public conversation that happens online,” Gnip said.
The service will allow brand marketers to monitor Instagram posts by keyword or by geolocation. Brands will also be able to track links being shared about them using Bitly and on Reddit.
Gnip is adding Reddit’s API because the social news site is sometimes where negative stories about brands first emerge. Reddit’s 50 million active members don’t just share links; they sometimes share first-hand stories.
Instagram, a more obvious choice given the photo-sharing site’s enormous popularity, also offers marketers a precious, and controversial, gem: Location information.
“We have consistently found that our customers are eager for more social data with geotagged content,” Gnip said.
Between 15 and 25 percent of Instagram users geotag their photos, Gnip said. Gnip will also hook up to a lesser-known photo-sharing service, Panoramio, where geolocation data is more abundant. The service plots photos on a Google map based on where they were taken.
Brands already use Gnip to survey 100 billion social interactions a month. The APIs added today will deliver many more. Every second, users upload on average 463 photos to Instagram, like 8,500 images and comment on 1,000. They shorten 925 links per second using Bitly, according to Gnip.
Gnip will also deliver reports on activity on Stack Overflow, a software Q-and-A site, and Plurk, an Asian Twitter competitor.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Category: APIs, Asia, bitly, geolocation, Gnip, Instagram, News, panoramio, photo sharing, Plurk, Reddit, social apis, stack overflow, tumblr, twitter, wordpress /
Social Media Newsfeed: Facebook Lookalike Audiences | Twitter Patent
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Facebook Officially Launches Lookalike Audiences (AllFacebook)
Lookalike Audiences, which Facebook began beta-testing last month, will launch this week as a targeting option on the social network’s power editor, allowing advertisers to reach out to potential customers with similar characteristics to their current customers. Facebook launched Custom Audiences last fall, which allowed brands to show ads to their current customers who were on the social network. Mashable As the name implies, Lookalike Audiences is a tool that alerts advertisers to similar consumers. In a blog post heralding the new feature, Facebook noted that marketers can buy Custom and Lookalike audiences in conjunction with any ad buy. The Next Web Facebook lists five ways advertising to similar customers can benefit businesses: fan acquisition, site registration, off-Facebook purchases, coupon claims and brand awareness. The company says it has been testing lookalike targeting with select businesses for a few weeks now, and the new tool “worked well” both online and offline. Inside Facebook Lookalike Audiences should be available to all Power Editor users this week. To create a Lookalike Audience, advertisers can select the “Audiences” tab from the left menu of Power Editor. MediaPost “Now with lookalike audiences, Facebook can use attributes like interests or demographics and show ads to people who share common attributes as their existing customers. Advertisers can serve any type of Facebook ad to these new groups of potential customers,” stated a Facebook blog post on Tuesday.
Twitter Scores a Patent for Twitter (CNET)
If you’re thinking about copying the way Twitter works, you might want to get a good lawyer: the technology at the core of the social network is officially patented. As first reported by The Verge, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Twitter a patent Tuesday for what it termed a “device independent message distribution platform.” The Verge The new patent was issued with Twitter founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone listed as inventors, and broadly describes a messaging service in which users follow each other and sent messages don’t have specific recipients, but are rather sent and displayed to those followers by the system itself. Twitter filed for the patent in 2007, but it’s doubtful the company will pursue any litigation against competing services with it now that it’s in hand — the company has very publicly promised to only use patents defensively and last year introduced the Innovator’s Patent Agreement to codify that promise and require permission from its employees before suing offensively. The Next Web It’s interesting to note that Ev Williams, another founder of the company, is not listed on the patent. While it was random timing that the patent was issued now, it’s definitely a boom to the company as it ponders a potential IPO move sometime in the near future.
Britney Spears First to Amass 6 Million Plus Followers on Google+ (SocialTimes)
Pop singer Britney Spears became the first Google+ user to amass more than 6 million followers on the site, GPlusData shows. Spears and her pop rival Lady Gaga, the only two Google+ users to have more followers than Google CEO Larry Page, are helping the site shed its reputation for being primarily used by Google employees.
Google+ Gets Camera App to Take Quick Pics of Your Hangouts (VentureBeat)
In related Google+ news, Google doesn’t think taking a screenshot is easy enough, so it updated its social network Google+ today to include “Capture,” an app that is supposed to make it easier to take pictures of your Hangouts. Since Hangouts arrived on the scene, screenshots have been the only option for capturing funny and memorable moments.
‘Wired’ Tries to Connect the Social TV Dots (LostRemote)
In a massive story released Tuesday, Wired magazine looks at social media and its impact on the TV business. While some of the analysis leaves a bit to be desired (i.e. duplicitous Twitter followers), the bulk of the content is smart, explaining why shows that may be ratings dogs can actually be quite lucrative.
Email Warrants Proposed in Senators’ Bipartisan Reforms To ECPA Legislation (The Huffington Post)
Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced legislation to strengthen email privacy protections on Tuesday, giving bipartisan flavor to the push to reform the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. Just as ECPA action heats up, however, a House hearing provided a preview of law enforcement’s objections.
Top 25 Twitter Cartoons (AllTwitter)
Here’s a little Twitter humor to get you through the day. Check out these 25 hilarious Twitter cartoons.
Amazon Launches ‘Send to Kindle’ Button for Web Publishers and WordPress Blogs (paidContent)
Amazon is now allowing publishers to add “Send to Kindle” buttons to their websites and WordPress blogs, the company announced on the Kindle blog Tuesday. It can be integrated into WordPress blogs as well. The Washington Post, Time magazine and the blog Boing Boing are already using the button.
Yelp Helps Local Businesses, Study Finds (SocialTimes)
Yelp drives an average of $8,000 in business to small businesses that have profiles on the site, according to a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group but funded by Yelp. Businesses that advertised on the social reviews site Yelp drew an average of $23,000 in additional businesses, after spending an average of $4,200, the study found after polling 4,800 small businesses.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Category: Amazon Send to Kindle Button, Biz Stone, Britney Spears, Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, email privacy, facebook custom audiences, Facebook Lookalike Audiences, google, Google+ camera app, Jack Dorsey, Newsfeed, Social Media, Twitter cartoons, Twitter patent, Wired, wordpress, Yelp for local businesses /
29 Tools to Enhance Your Business Blog
Are you looking for cool blogging tools to enhance your business blog? The right mix of blogging plugins and widgets can make it easier to blog and also help you achieve your business goals. To help you keep up with the latest and greatest, we asked a group of blogging pros to share the favorite [...]
Category: author box reloaded plugin, authorsure plugin, better wp security, blogging tool, blubrry powerpress plugin, clicktotweet, content curation, easelly, elevatr, gravity forms, image tool, inbound marketing, inbound writer plugin, lastpass, lead converter, leadplayer, list building, listly, long tail pro, lucky orange, magic action box, photo pin, photodropper, podcasting, popclip, Premise, scribe, seo auto linker plugin, Social Bookmarking, social crawlytics, Social Media Tool, stock photo, Tools, twitter app, vaultpress, video, video seo, video seo plugin, wordpress, wordpress backup to dropbox plugin, wordpress plugin, wordpress seo, wordpress seo plugin, wp greet box, zenwriter /
The 17 Best WordPress Plugins for Social Media, SEO, and Better Visitor Engagement in 2013
Every year I share my own experiences using WordPress plugins to run Windmill Networking to help you make your own website more social media optimized, SEO friendly, and even help convert more of your visitors into new leads. I say “website” because WordPress is not just for blogs: As a CMS, WordPress powers one of every 6 websites on the Internet, nearly 60 million in all, with 100,000 more popping up each day.
