Wpblab - A Wordpress Social Media Show

In this episode, Jason Tucker and Bridget Willard, along with you in the chat room, will reminisce on the show, the community, technology, and even their own careers. We'd love to have you join in. Celebrating Two Years!! Late September 2015 – Bridget was working as an office manager for a construction company.  Jason said there was a new video / chat platform called Blab.im and decided he wanted to give it a try and suggested Bridget join him! Bridget said “I don’t know anything about WordPress” and Jason said “That’s why I want you to do the show!” Started as a 90 minute show and has since been trimmed back to an hour Blab.im allowed anyone to pop in as a random guest during the show and they had guests from countries all over Was originally just a WordPress focused show, so any topic around WordPress was fair game, has since evolved to focus on WordPress marketing and social media Just as Jason was starting to get tired of / annoyed with Blab.im … it went away! It was the perfect time to try a new platfor

This week Bridget Willard and Jen Miller speak with Adam Silver, Lead Organizer of #WCLAX on Creating Community at WordCamp The post WPblab EP86 – Creating Community at WordCamp w/ Adam Silver #WCLAX appeared first on WPwatercooler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Jason and Bridget are joined by Josh Pollock. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of co-branding your WordPress products. Josh Pollock – Caldera Labs – Caldera Forms – Caldera @Josh412, @calderaforms, @CalderaWP, or @CalderaLearn  #catdera http://calderawp.com, http://calderalabs.org/, https://calderaforms.com/, & https://learn.calderalabs.org/ Co-branding is when you leverage the audience of two different brands by teaming up together to help elevate both brands or gain a new audience segment. (Like the Eddie Bauer Ford Explorer) Caldera and Give did a co-branding with a tutorial on using Caldera Forms to submit a fundraising campaign “Create a Peer-to-Peer Give Campaign with Caldera Forms” –  http://bit.ly/2vdvrxH Caldera & Aspen Grove – DIVI landing page co-branding with Caldera Prerequisite: Get involved in the community At some point, you just sit down with someone and say “Hey, I need something” and then figure out what it is that you can offer them in return – how can you benefit

In this episode, Jennifer Bourn, lead organizer of WordCamp Sacramento (among other things), will discuss encouraging public speaking from the meetup to the camp and beyond. The post WPblab EP84 – Encouraging Speaking at Your Local Meetup w/ Jennifer Bourn appeared first on WPwatercooler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on WPblab we speak with Andy Lara on how he build an in-person community online for the Vox Podcast with Mike Erre Andy Lara – Creative Director – VOX Community Cohost of Vox Podcast – http://www.voxpodcast.com/ @andy_lara twitter Mike wanted to create a place where he could talk about and say the kinds of things that aren’t as easy when you are bound by the rules of a church so he thought a podcast might be the way   Started out first online, but grew into an a community Evangelism / Doctrine / Theology … conferences, meetups, retreats etc … there is a lot of commonality between how churches function and how the WordPress community functions In marketing nowadays, people don’t want the hard sell – the way you evangelize a product or a community is much the same Podcasts are one of the best things out there for transparency / reaching your customers & audience that a lot of small businesses aren’t doing. It’s a very low-budget way to create authenticity. Mike and Andy started a podcast in Mike’

This week on WPblab Bridget and Jason explore Twitter demographics and how you can use them for your WordPress business. Bridget got a new microphone – YAY! Twitter > Analytics (available via desktop twitter site) Analytics.twitter.com Audience – discover user interests and general statistics, such as marital status and education.  If you were a dating site, you would want most of your audience to show as “single”. If they were mostly married, you might reaching out to the wrong audience (or offering the wrong service!) How long should your content be? What grade level is your writing aimed at?  Check your analytics and see what kind of education your followers have – what would be best for them? Newspapers generally aim at a fifth grade reading level (WSJ – ninth grade). Most people, don’t read – they scan. You don’t want to make people feel stupid by speaking at a level beyond their reading/vocabulary skills. Analytics shows stats on Audience, Demographics, Lifestyle, etc. Go to Analytics > Tweets and cho

Segmentation FTW. Christie Chirinos email marketing as an intelligent combination of transactional emails & direct emails in part with a multi channel promotion strategy that exists as a part of a larger marketing strategy that also takes the other 3 P's into account… also FTW Personal twitter – https://twitter.com/cicichirinos Partner of Caldera Labs https://calderaforms.com/ https://twitter.com/CalderaWP She started in the nonprofit sector learning by doing. https://mailchimp.com/ (should tag with affiliate link) They use convertkit on CalderaForms now. https://convertkit.com/ ConvertKit is a great tool from segments but not user friendly ConvertKit = Photoshop MailChimp = Canva   Segmented lists Many lists can create problems with subscriptions. Consider consolidating your lists and segmenting them out.   Example of a segmented Is this for you or your clients on checkout   Focus your copy “Or this” or “if that” = Segment   Bridget loves old navy Use case Goals for creating one and done leads 1st a mon

This week on WPwatercooler we'll be discussing what to look for in a good WordPress theme. https://apppresser.com/ & Holler Box https://hollerwp.com/ Challenges of collecting email addresses It’s much easier to get someones email when you already have a blog and can get them to provide emails to get updates and downloads/goodies, etc. Generating great content is super important for any site, but even more so for an e-commerce site, makes it easier to get people to opt-in if you have content they need/want Oh average, It takes 7-10 interactions before you win a customer. If you have a small audience and low traffic to your site, getting people there and generating sales can be really difficult.  Doing content halfway won’t get you there. Have a plan before you write your post – need a strategy about what you’re going to write and who you’re aiming to reach Writing for people that will share it(influencers) Thinking of them by name Being intentional about what you write and who you write it for makes a h

In web design, brand creation, and even creative, the psychology of color matters. In this episode of WPblab, Designer and Developer Meagan Hanes will talk us through some of the considerations on how color affects us — as consumers. Meagan Hanes Designer/Developer since the 2000’s Developers often struggle with design – color can be one of the most challenging aspects Take a design magazine, rip it up and start making a pinboard in real life – it’s a great way to start training your eye http://colourlovers.com Communicating meaning in your brand’s colors There is a lot of symbolism in color choices Generally speaking, reds are passionate, greens and blues are soothing, nature colors Happy and generous can be shown with warm yellow colors McDonald’s chose red and yellow because they make you hungry but they are also bold, agitating colors that cause customers to leave quicker, which is desirable in fast food! When communicating your branding, the colors you pick can make or break your message.  Be

This week Jason Tucker is joined by Verious Smith to discuss how you can market your Meetup.com group using WordPress. Both Verious and Jason run WordPress meetups Inland Empire WordPress Meetup (Verious) since 2012 Decided to try a Google Hangout and see who would show up – met Jason, Russell Aaron was there too (met Russell in Vegas before moving to California) Meetups are how you build community – finding people who share a common interest. If you want to do something cool and need someone to do it with, check out Meetup! Meetup is great, but communities aren’t built instantly. Make sure you have a website for your meetup!! There is only so much that you can include on meetup – a website gives you more control over the content you can share with your members and the appearance. People that you meet and interact with each month in your meetup can quickly become your friends, coworkers, etc… great for if you are new to town! You can offer learning/training resources on your WordPress site for your meetup

This week on WPblab we talk with Eric Tracz & Brad Bihun of PeepSo about how you can build a social network on your existing WordPress website. Why do we need a social network on WordPress? We all live in our own little niche communities – we can translate that into online communities – with very detailed content that is relative to a very specific group / niche Facebook groups are great, but you don’t get the feeling of a small close-knit community that you would from a social network built on a niche site There are a lot of people that prefer not to post/share on Facebook due to privacy When you create your own community, you have more control and you can empower your users – they can help each other and answer questions or give advice to fellow community members Private social communities can be especially useful for people who want to share sensitive and private information (such as communities built around a support group) Building community takes time and effort regardless of the method you choose.

This week on WPblab Bridget and Jason discuss taking on volunteers for a nonprofit and how to keep them interested in working as a volunteer webmaster for your WordPress website. Inspired by Should You Work with a Volunteer? Jason works for a nonprofit and Bridget works with nonprofit businesses With volunteers, you need to give them encouragement (“Yes, you can do this!”), but there are limitations They need to know the software (WordPress) Communication is important, even if you enable your volunteers, you need to communicate with other departments, employees, etc. that the volunteer has the authority and ability to get/share information Volunteers should be empowered & equipped – make sure they have the right access to everything they need and the right tools to get the job done. (ie. don’t have a Hackathon without making sure your participants have laptops!) Don’t require all of your volunteers to be in the office when they volunteer – they may be stay-at-home moms/dads or have other work-related

This week on WPblab we'll be discussing how to market your WordPress niche with Twitter Chats. It should be a fun episode learning how to interact with a twitter chat and how to run one yourself using your own hashtag. Twitter Chats – using hashtags: (#) + ‘keyword’ to filter/track related posts on a specific topic Back in the 90’s AOL had chatrooms with names where you could talk to people about a common topic. Anyone was welcome and it was public. Twitter chats are the modern day version of that. Hashtags help you to filter and search twitter – Twitter chats are “LIVE” versions of that search where people are commenting and participating in real-time You can register your chat on twubs.com but NO ONE can own a hashtag (since anyone can type and use them). It’s important for your hashtag to be unique. If you see a hashtag that was once used but is no longer, you can always ask the original parties who used it if it’s available, but better to select something no one is already using. Twitter chats can take 3

This week on WPblab Bridget Willard and Jason Tucker share some tips and tricks for effective social media campaigns for your nonprofit's events. Nonprofits are often short on time, money and are reliant on volunteer assistance to help things run Geocoding and hashtags are two great ways to curate your event’s photos/marketing, etc. Things that make crowdsourcing photos really easy: Smartphone Selfie stick (possibly with tripod!) Public-facing social media Re-gramming on Instagram is against the TOS so Twitter is often a better choice for sharing and re-sharing of photos. You can however, share links to the Instagram posts (on FB, Twitter, etc). Here’s an example. https://www.facebook.com/SoCalHiker/posts/10155307306634344 Both Twitter and Instagram posts can be embedded into your blog posts, which is a great way to get the word out and continue to motivate your attendees/volunteers and/or thank them! You can also create an event gallery on Flickr that everyone can contribute to. Dropbox or Google Drive th

This week on WPblab Bridget Willard and Jason Tucker will be discussing the ways in which you can manage social media using 3rd party tools to help you the WordPress freelancer spend less time doing more. Sharing buttons on your blog/site are super important – not everyone is going to have or install extensions to help them share your posts Facebook https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ Twitter https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator Mashshare https://wordpress.org/plugins/mashsharer/ — social media share buttons Social Warfare https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-warfare/ Yoast SEO Plugin — Allow Open Graph Data (Social Settings — Enable Facebook) Don’t install with another SEO plugin, just use it by itself! Make sure to use and update your metadata!! Don’t forget your feature images Use iOS to grab the featured image on a iPhone or iPad https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imagedrain-download-all-images-from-safari/id932866396?mt=8 Buffer.com — Social sharing and scheduling for Twitter, Linke

WPblab EP72 – WordPress Plugins – If you build it, will they come? w/ Russell Aaron Russell Aaron – Web Dev Studios Bridget – Actions do things, Filters change things What’s a plugin? – File inside directory. Adds or enhance website, or de-enhance, Simmer down down. Finish plugin, ship it and call it a day! Built & tested and released, people are installing and then white screen the site First step in marketing, believe in product. Use it every day. Plugin solves his own problem. His marketing – let me to take it to a competition at a WordCamp ( Plugin-a-Palooza ) and get an idea of who is my core demographic How do you promote? No good marketing thing on the repo… The repo has copy… Real people don’t know repo. Directory good compromise for users. Have a good call to action. Make sense in your copy. Have someone else write the copy. Don’t use terms dev terms. Use words your audience will understand. No one is looking for the product by your name. Users look for Automatic scheduling twitter. “Revival pos

This week on WPblab we're talking with Sherie & Cheryl LaPrade about using Twitter to market your WordPress side hustle. If you run your own business and you are looking for ways to market it, this show will be perfect for you. The post WPblab EP69 – Using Twitter to market your WordPress side hustle appeared first on WPwatercooler. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on WPblab we're at a new time 7-8pm Pacific and will be talking with David Blackmon about his Divi Chat podcast and how he used his show to build community around Divi page builder and Elegant Themes. David Blackmon – Divi Chat http://divi.chat/ How to start a WordPress podcast Started in a Facebook group, many folks helping one another in there talking about WordPress and Divi Decided to have a meetup and 15-20 people showed up from around the world!  Nick – founder of ElegantThemes – came down with his team and hung out as well. David had a great love for podcasts and saw the potential in it – great medium, easily consumable, a great marketing vehicle to get a message out Was originally going to start his own podcast, but when he met  up with a bunch of his online WordPress and Divi friends in person, he decided to start a show similar to WP Watercooler, but about the Divi platform  (Using YouTube Live – also uploads the audio to iTunes) Google Spreadsheet with topics listed for upcoming episodes

This week on WPblab we'll be speaking with WPShout about learning to do WordPress development. If you are looking to be a WordPress developer this should be the perfect episode for you. http://www.wpshout.com David B Hayes and Fred Meyer – WordPress developers, contributors, and enthusiasts. Our goal is to make the world of WordPress accessible to everybody. Alex Denning – started publishing about WordPress development on WPShout in 2009 One of their projects for meditation – http://medivate.com WPShout – mostly writing for people who are learning or who already are developers – not aimed at beginners David writes a quick guide every Thursday for simple tips and suggestions Good starting place for someone wanting to get into development – Up and Running – step by step introduction to WordPress development Up and Running  – Discount code: WPBLAB – 20% off any package!! If you purchase before end of 3/24, you’ll also be entered to win some cool prizes! Up and Running starts with the core technical fundamentals

This week Bridget and Jen Miller discuss how you can market yourself by live tweeting a WordCamp Live Tweeting at WordCamp Bridget Willard You Too Can Be A Guru Jen Miller @jenblogs4u Offering Lead Conversion Tools and Blogging Need Someone To Blog? 100% Unique Website Content. Need Safe Blog Posts? Hire a Ghost Blogger… Jen – been using twitter for 6 years finally realized twitter is a relationship building medium Jen wanted to be a Guru too Bridget – in 2012 was helping with a political campaign She would listen over the internet and tweet out quotes with relevant hashtags to help with exposure When she finally made it to a WordCamp, it seemed so obvious that Live Tweeting would be a thing you should do Bridget’s tips & tricks: You Too Can Be A Guru Find out the official hashtag for the conference you are at, and if there isn’t one, make up one that makes sense, but try to make sure it’s not already being used Find out who speakers are and their Twitter handles Some WordCamps have speaker twitter lists