Category Archives: Technology Made Easy
Technology Made Easy – advice on the uses of Social Media Marketing for promoting your business
Cape Town Small Business Websites
I am sure I don’t need to convince you that getting your small business onto the internet is of vital importance.
I love WordPress.com because you can have a website where ordinary people can update their content without paying for web hosting, graphic design and web development.
As an example of this concept, I built a new website today using only a free email address from Gmail.com and a free account from WordPress.com.
My new business, Cape Town Small Business Websites, now has a Search Engine Optimized, Mobile-Friendly website with a blog section and a Contact Form.
Cape Town Small Business Websites - Creating websites for small businesses in Cape Town
If you would like my help to get your Cape Town-based small business onto the internet without breaking the bank, then please use this form:
Using WordPress.com to create a Mobile Presence
WordPress.com Mobile Themes
It is becoming more and more important to optimize your website for mobile.
The Smartphone is transforming communication and publishing.
490 million smartphones sold in 2011. – Jeff Bullas
When a visitor browses to your WordPress.com blog website using a mobile device, WordPress.com will show special themes designed to work on small screens focusing on fast load times.
Some WordPress.com themes are mobile-ready, also called “responsive width”, that adapt themselves to the device of the user.
However all WordPress.com themes are already mobile-friendly by default. The Minileven theme (a modification of Twenty Eleven) is displayed on modern mobile devices.
Users using older mobile devices will see a version of the WordPress Mobile Edition theme.
WordPress.com also provides a special theme called Onswipe for the iPad.
So by using WordPress.com your website is already mobile-ready without you having to do anything.
Just another great reason why you should be using WordPress.com for building your Web Presence.
Sources:
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
3 Steps To Success With Digital Marketing – Jeff Bullas
See also:
Why you should be using WordPress.com for creating a Web Presence – Brian Currin
Like this:
Why you should be using WordPress.com for creating a Web Presence
and the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
The Yoga Factor
The quick version:
People need to Find You and Talk To You.
Finding you is called Marketing and talking to you is called Sales.
I have now just saved you 3 years of study at University.
Yes, it is that simple.
A WordPress.com website is the perfect tool for marketing and sales without breaking the bank, especially if you are passionate about your business and would like to get involved with your own online promotion.
I love WordPress.com because you can have a website where ordinary people can update their content without paying for web hosting, graphic design and web development.
Not that those things are wrong, of course, but you can always build up towards having them as your business and brand grows.
Some examples in action:
- The Yoga Factor
- The Lyzyrd Kyngs
- Blk Sonshine
- Crimson Chrysalis
- RockFest Radio
- Billy Forrest
- 1001 South African Songs
- Rhythm Records (The Label)
Some of my pending projects that will be using WordPress.com:
- Triple M Entertainment
- Stars Of Africa Football Academy
- Masauko Chipembere (from Blk Sonshine)
- The Production Person
The long version:
WordPress.com is a hosting platform that utilizes the same WordPress software that anyone can download from WordPress.org.
With WordPress.com, the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of for you.
With the freestanding WordPress.org software, you need to install it on your own server or a 3rd party hosting provider.
WordPress.com Benefits
- It’s free and much easier to set up
- Everything is taken care of: setup, upgrades, spam, backups, security, etc.
- Your website / blog is on hundreds of servers, so it’s highly unlikely it will go down due to traffic
- Your content is backed up automatically
- You get extra traffic from the WordPress.com community
- Your dashboard is secure (SSL) making it even safer to log in on shared networks
WordPress.com Cons
- Provides 170+ themes (and adding more every day), but you cannot upload a custom theme
- You can’t modify the PHP code behind your blog
- You can’t upload plugins
If you are a web developer, or you are happy to pay a web developer for their time, here are the benefits of WordPress.org:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Benefits
- Ability to upload themes
- Ability to upload plugins
- Great community
- Complete control to change code if you’re technically minded
However, for me, the Cons far out-weigh the Benefits:
WordPress.org (self-hosted) Cons
- You need a good web host, which can get expensive.
- Requires more technical knowledge to set up and run
- You’re responsible for stopping spam
- You have to handle backups
- You must upgrade the software when a new version comes out
- If you get a huge spike in traffic your site will probably go down unless you have a robust hosting setup
Why I love WordPress.com
For no charge, WordPress.com provides web hosting, unlimited database storage with redundancy and backups, automatic software upgrades, community support forums, multi-lingual administration and themes, real-time traffic stats, comment tracking, blog and post rankings and other features not available anywhere else. These features will always be free for blogs started on WordPress.com.
WordPress.com offers paid upgrades as a way to provide premium features without forcing people to host their website / blogs elsewhere. These upgrades are optional.
- Currently over 170 themes to choose from, some are Premium, but most are Free.
- Integrated Statistics on where your visitors are coming from, and a whole lot more.
- Excellent support available from fellow users (on Forums) and WordPress staff.
- Robust server back ups.
- Multiple users, great for clubs, communities, bands and so on.
- Mobile-friendly
Resources for this article:
WordPress.com, WordPress, and WordPress.org
Like this:
Google Will Change Web Marketing in 2012
Google is poised to completely alter how websites market themselves over the next year. While easing users into changing search results pages, Google has also designed a new method for websites to structure data so that its crawler can better pull information. This is a tremendous strategy. Google doesn’t need to own all of the information in the world, but does own the methods of accessing that information — as well as the ability to advertise to people who use that access. - Brian Whalley
via Google Will Change Web Marketing in 2012 – Brian Whalley – Harvard Business Review.
Like this:
OK you’ve got a website, so now what?
Image supplied by www.freedigitalphotos.net
Having a website to promote your brand and business is very important, but if nobody sees it then it is not much use.
It is like having a billboard next to a gravel road in the middle of nowhere.
As much as we might like to think otherwise, the world is not looking for you specifically. If they were, they could just type your web address i.e. briancurrin.com directly into the address bar of their favourite browser and up would pop your website.
What people are looking for is solutions to their problems, and if your website offers the right solution, then it needs to appear on the first page of search results.
Assuming that your website is already search optimized (though many aren’t) here are a few ideas on how to drive traffic to your website.
Facebook Brand Pages
Creating a Facebook Brand Page is essential now. These pages work very well for big corporates, but are also proving highly effective for small businesses. A Facebook Page is another portal to your website and when you post comments and status updates on your wall you can include links to your website.
http://facebook.briancurrin.com
Paper.li
This portal allows you to create your own online newspaper aggregating information from the Twitter, Blog, RSS and Facebook sources that you choose. Paper.li automatically produces daily news, which means every day there is at least one new quality link to your website.
http://paper.li/briancurrin
Google Adwords
Over 90% of searches done on the internet use the Google search engine. Adverts appear above and on the right-hand side of search results which try and match what it is you are searching for.
Google Adwords provides a very effective pay-per-click method of driving traffic to a website, and they also supply extensive analytic information to help with the adjusting and tweaking of this online advertising medium.
Are you using any of these tools and platforms to help grow your business?
Like this:
10 Ways to Get More Fans on Facebook | Social Media Today
Have you created a Fan Page, but now you’re wondering – “How Do I Get People to ‘Like’ my Page? If so, you’re not alone. Many people struggle with getting Fans. Here are 10 ways to get more Fans. – Joy Fleming
via 10 Ways to Get More Fans on Facebook | Social Media Today.
Like this:
Social Media Consultant Cape Town
Goal: appear on first page of results for social media consultant cape town
Tick.
Google search: social media consultant cape town
Google Search Instant Preview
Google Search Instant Preview - click for bigger image
If you hover (or click) on the little magnifying glass next to a search result, you get a preview of the page with some appropriate text highlighted.
Google says:
Click once on the magnifying glass
in the search result to instantly see a preview of the web page.
After activating Instant Previews with that one click, you can hover over any other search result to see a preview of the web page. Learn More
Also interesting to see who is paying to get their results above my organic results.
The Rise Of Facebook and The Demise of MySpace in South Africa
A picture says a 1000 words, so consider this graph an 1000-word essay on usage of Social Media in South Africa over the last two years. MySpace is part of “other” (the black dotted line) on this graph.
Graph supplied by StatCounter.com
Using sub-domains to make cool and clean web addresses
Image from http://www.freedigitalphotos.net
Way back in the mists of time (2009), it was OK to only have a website if you wanted to have a web presence.
But now it is becoming more and more important to have a Facebook profile, a Facebook Brand Page, a Twitter profile, a LinkedIn account, a YouTube account, etc, etc.
If you own your own domain name it is good idea to use sub-domains to create really cool and clean web addresses.
facebook.com/briancurrin is much cooler than, for example:
facebook.com/profile.php?id=545949353#!/pages/Brian-Currin/162815387075193
However Facebook.BrianCurrin.com is even cooler, very clean and great for printing on business cards, flyers and other advertising and branding material.
This sub-domain idea can be used for almost anything, such as:
… and so on and so forth.
You might wonder why I haven’t included “www.” as a prefix for these addresses. This is not really necessary in modern web browsers anymore, but for printing purposes you might want to include it. Even better, though it is a bit ugly, is the “http://” prefix.
So www.facebook.briancurrin.com becomes http://facebook.briancurrin
And capitalization is not really an issue nowadays either, so www.Facebook.BrianCurrin.com works perfectly and it looks much better from a branding point-of-view.
