Wow! Can you believe that summertime is right around the corner?
The flowers are blooming, the weather is warming up and I know those days are coming when we would rather be sitting by the pool than in the office.
In fact. . . check this out, my New Tricks team has already started their warm weather work habits!
Yes things do tend to slow down in the summer, BUT, I once had a boss back in the day, when I was doing healthcare marketing, who said to me, [click to continue…]
As an entrepreneur with a small business to run, everything we can do to streamline our work flow leaves us more time to get the “real” work done. I am going to share with you an example of what I did to manage a big freelancer issue. I had begun to be inundated with requests from people to “pick my brain”. How to handle these requests was a conundrum for me. Some of them would turn into clients or referral sources, yet many others just needed a bit of advise or coaching on their ideas and, either would not be a fit for me, or the cost to do business with me (coaching, web design, or social media management) would be out of their budgets.
I tackled this issue by making it easy for someone to get an hour of my time, but they must fill out a form with some questions in advance and they must pay for the session beforehand. If they choose to work with me on an ongoing basis, I will deduct the cost of that hour from their proposal. This works great because offering this session allows people an affordable point of entry to work with me. And it encourages people to contact me who may need just an hour or two to talk out some issue they are having. When I actually created this offer on a page on my site, it began to work like a charm. This also helps me to put boundaries on my time. It is really easy for me to get carried away talking to someone about the things that I love. Now, I can easily refer a potential client who wants to talk about their project to the “Talk it Out” form on my website and have them schedule and pay for the time they need.
Creating this page was good for my business, but even better was “how” I did it. There are several tools that, when working together, made the whole process streamlined for me. [click to continue…]
The WordCamp Savannah is happening next weekend August 20-22, and it includes ME! I was already excited about taking the New Tricks Team to their first WordCamp experience. This will be my fourth WordCamp but the first one where I am a speaker. Here is the line up of speakers:
Speakers
WordCamp Savannah will bring together a variety of speakers including both visiting WordPress experts and local WordPress practitioners. We’ll be posting speaker bios shortly, but so far, here are some of the confirmed speakers:
- Matt Thomas, SCAD alumni and designer for Automattic.
- Caila Brown, SCAD Radio General Manager & District Print Art Director.
- Mark Jaquith, lead core developer of WordPress and independent consultant.
- Andrew Nacin, committing core developer of WordPress and Google Summer of Code participant.
- Jane Wells, user experience designer for WordPress.
- Daryl Koopersmith, contributing core developer of WordPress and Google Summer of Code participant.
- Ptah Dunbar, contributing core developer of WordPress.
- Sheri Bigelow, Happiness Engineer for wordpress.com.
- Anthony Bubel, Happiness Engineer for wordpress.com.
- Matt Mullenweg, co-founder and benevolent dictator for life of WordPress.
- Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies.
- Sara Cannon
- Dan Cannon
- Judi Knight ( Here is a link to the presentation)
I will be speaking on using Social Media Plugins that you can use on Websites to help you with using your site as the hub of your Social Media Marketing. In the meantime here are some things you can do to get your social media game rolling.
This is a smaller WordCamp and offers a chance to really have some face time with a lot of well known people in the WordPress Community and to meet and mingle with others. It is only 25.00. How can you lose?
When someone comes to your website, you have about 3-5 seconds for them to “get” whether they want to stay or leave. I believe that part of their assessment is whether or not they can ” know, like and trust ” you through your website. I have found that several factors go into building this first impression with your potential and your current clients. [click to continue…]
This site is one that New Tricks newest web designer, Jason Brown, worked on. It was one of Jason’s first WordPress site designs and I just love it. I think he has a great career ahead as do the Stand Up Guys! Casey Walsh did his own videos which are a hoot. He has a whole lot of them on You Tube. Very savvy Casey. Glad to hear it is working:
Ever since the new website launched the phone has been ringing off the hook. Just about everyone that calls says that after visiting our site, they come right back to us before they even finish viewing our competitors sites because they felt like they already knew us. They say that our site was just so vibrant and friendly, and that none of the other sites blogged about their on the job experiences and it really made them appreciate the fact that we love what we do and are not just here to make money.
They just seem so excited to tell us that they watched all the videos and looked at all the pictures before they even called for an estimate. It’s like their minds were already made up. Even when we finish the job they mention that they love the fact that the same guys from the pictures came out and it just reassured them that they made the right decision.
That’s why we decided to go with New Tricks. They really captured what the Stand Up Guys are all about. We worked hands on with Judi and Jason, and they never made us feel like we were a burden. They took the necessary time to do it right and I regret nothing. With their knowledge about SEO we climbed the google ladder and we really owe them a sincere thank you. So thank you New Tricks, WordPress was exactly what we needed to let the people know who the Stand Up Guys truly are.
Casey Walsh
Stand Up Guys Junk Removal
- Do you need to project a polished branded look that reflects what and who your business is to the world?
- Are you ready to show people you are an expert in your field with excellent, regularly scheduled posts?
- Would you like your site to show up for the keywords people use when they search for your business?
- Could you use an easy to manage, social media plan that uses your website as its easy to operate hub?
We love working with small businesses and entrepreneurs, offering full service from business strategy consultation, to branding, logo design, and customized WordPress website development and social media marketing.
Take a look at our Portfolio page. Schedule a “Talk it Out Session,” a consulting hour packed with ideas, teaching and strategies for taking your business to the next level. To make the next steps easier we have designed three web design packages to meet different needs and price points. Take a look around and if it is a fit, schedule your Talk it Out Session today!
Working with Images
One of the biggest problems non-graphic artists have when learning to maintain their websites is the whole issue of working with their images. Web 2.0 sites really rock with photos and images to demonstrate a topic or can be used in a long blog post to break up text into manageable sized chunks.
Image File Types and Purpose
It helps to know a bit about file types. If you don’t know your JPEGs from your GIFs image formats, this is for you. First, lets talk about file compression.
There are basically two ways of saving images, lossy or lossless (no, I didn’t make those up). If an image is saved in a lossy image format, it means the format being used discards some of the “unimportant” image information. However, the resulting image file is smaller. Lossless retains ALL the image information. OK, now that you know that, here’s a overview of the [click to continue…]
The Atlanta WordPress Users Group is going to be held at 130 Krog at New Tricks Atlanta Headquarters on Wednesday, April 21 at 7:00 PM. This is the 17th meeting of this popular Atlanta Meetup Group. Jack Kennard and I, Judi Knight, his new co-organizer, will give a basic presentation on how to go about getting a WordPress site up and started. I have written a recent post on moving your site from a WordPress.com site to a .org site and it pretty much outlines the material that we will cover. The presentation is planned to last about an hour including time for questions and answers.
Jack and I would like try and find a format for the group that can satisfy the diverse levels of experience in this group. So after the presentation we we will break into smaller discussion groups so beginners and more advanced members can talk about the things that are pertinent to their issue and get questions answered on both basic and more advanced topics. We are trying to work out the schedule so that there is little something for everyone.
With all of the interest and talent in our Atlanta WordPress Users’ group, we also want to give others a chance to present, so please, don’t be shy. Let us know if you have a topic you’d like to hear more about or if your would like to do the presentation for an upcoming meeting.
Some suggestions have been to have a meeting on the new features of 3.0 and another presentation on WPMU (multi-user version) and Buddy Press. So stay tuned, and keep in touch. I hope to see you Wednesday!
