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!
Florist Website Design has been dominated by old school design of the on-line floral groups, FTD, TeleFlora and 1-800 Flowers. Now florist’s have a wonderful opportunity, with the new technologies available with social media and content management websites, to beat out their competitors in showcasing their finest work and specialties on-line. These technologies can be used to increase revenues from business activities they love to do, large parties and wedding for example and decrease their reliance upon the marketing provided by FTD, Telefora, 1-800 Flowers and other on-line ordering companies. With the new web tools and increased use of Internet, people can now easily Google a brick and mortar florist to order flowers from any city in the world. They can place their orders directly to a real person. This allows all of their budgeted money for an arrangement to go into their flowers and florist and delivery, cutting out the portion to the unnecessary broker. Check out this Business Week article, Is the Bloom off at FTD?.
In Atlanta, there are so many FTD, Teleflora and 1-800 Flowers sites and they all look essentially alike. The Florists Websites relying on these company templates have been lured in by easy and have become complacent maybe thinking a more personalized site would be too expensive or hard to maintain. Not now with WordPress Florist websites being able to be a regular business site with built in blogging ability all ready for Social Media Marketing Opportunities. Now you can post those professional photos your bride sent to you right on the site in a couple of minutes, showcasing the beautiful work that you did. The pictures of those roundy moundy’s from the Teleflora and such sites cannot compete with your being able to post beautiful examples of your favorite and more profitable work. Then you can send those posts out to Twitter and to FaceBook where more brides and event planners will be searching for options. Florists who use this new design and website technology have a huge advantage as their sites stand out from the crowd and are more personal representation of the shop and its unique qualities. People buy from people they Know, Like and Trust. These new Florist websites are able to build that in like a window into their shop.
New Tricks designed a WordPress website for Candler Park Flowers last March and by Mother’s Day they had sixty new orders from out of town than they had the year before all saying it was because of the website.
Want to know more? Here is Part One of the presentation by Dene Shepherd of New Tricks for the November 19th Floral Meet and Greet sponsored by Carlstedt’s Atlanta and Linda Knight McCarter. Beautiful flowers donated by Associated Farms were given out as door prizes throughout the night to the delight of all.
Stromquist & Company has an existing website for product information and online ordering. They asked New Tricks to help create a complementary new site to share information with their colleagues in the commercial and industrial control community. [click to continue…]
For the past ten years, I ( Judi) had been working as a builder/developer converting warehouses into lofts, doing historic restorations of apartment buildings and rebuilding beach houses blown away by hurricanes. At one point back then, I Googled my construction company’s name. Lo and behold what came up was my dog, Craig’s blog on Dogster. Now you can just go read what happened on Craig’s site since he has posted on that subject, but I will go ahead and tell you that because of that incident, I found out how much search engines love the dynamic nature of blogs. At that point, I jumped in and changed my site to a WordPress blog and began to immerse myself in all things social media.
That turned out to be a really good thing that happened because right about that time construction industry was showing signs of slowing down. And by the time it did, I had found another very compelling occupation. Friends read my blog and then began asking me to help them with theirs. Then when friends of friends started seeking out my services, I joined up with Dene and away we went. Dene and I finished our logo and the New Tricks website and our business has been steadily growing ever since.
We have found that having an online presence with a blog format site is darn near essential if you have a product to see, a service to sell or are selling yourself, in the job market. One of our recent clients, Global Girl credits her blog with her recently being selected for a prestigious Washington DC internship. Having the blog gave her prospective employer a window into her work habits, her drive, her ability to write and think , her knowledge of social media, what she looked like, and so much more than she could or should not have put on her resume. Just a resume is not enough. People want to know who you are before taking a chance on you. By reading your blog they feel, rightly or wrongly that they know you. They can see what you are capable of .
People say that people prefer to buy from people that they know. I think that also holds true for employers bringing on new hires. It is good to have a referral before taking that step to bring someone on board. Whether you are selling something or selling yourself, you may want to consider getting yourself out there by blogging. Our motto is, ” It’s never too late to be the best in breed.”
We have written before about the evolution of WordPress’s use as a website development platform rather than, what most people think, as just a blogging program. Using WordPress for websites is cutting edge Web 2.0 and takes advantage of WordPress’s use of a My SQL database. It then becomes a content management system, otherwise referred to as a CMS, which offers much more to a business than a traditional old skool static or Flash website.
Today, I want to bring you what I imagine must be the first song in history about using WordPress as a CMS. I know it is a little rough and I understand there is a new version coming out with much improved production quality. In the meantime, I bring you a performance by Charles Williams from the Dallas WordPress Camp:
I came across a great post today on Copyblogger called How to Create Better Content: Treat Your Readers Like Dogs. Given that we are a company that believes you can teach an old dog New Tricks, I found this right up our alley. In real life it is always much more effective to use your “Biscuit Voice” with your spouse or your child, if you’d like to them to do something, rather than speak to them in a stern or critical manner. You know the biscuit voice? It is the one you use with your dog when you want him to come to you.
Clydey, do you want a biscuit ???>
According to Sonia Simone, the same theory applies to increasing the readership of your blog. The basic concept being in my own words, that you need to give your readers a treat. You must make your content so appetizing that your readers will chew through a trash bag to get a mouthful. Well actually she doesn’t say that, but sort of. Check it out.
Shawn Black came to us after he heard about the benefits of using WordPress as a website platform. He was especially interested in the searchability of these content management sites as well as the ease with which he could learn to maintain the site and have it be an active conversation with his clients. He had already started with some other designers but after meeting with us he completely changed directions. [click to continue…]
Amanda Earley graduated from Tulane in May 2009 in Latin American Studies and International Development. She is now attending Georgetown’s Master’s Program in Latin American Studies and Foreign Service and was back off the Rio to do research this summer. She came to us wanting a blog site where she can write about her various projects as well as being a forum for people who are living and working all over the globe. [click to continue…]
I am Co-organizer of the Atlanta WordPress User's Group Meetup. We meet the third Wednesday of each month and try to have a little something for people at all levels.
Check it out! We now have almost 900 members!
