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!
You may know that the New Tricks motto is,
It is never too Late
but if you haven’t done these ten simple social media steps you are really squandering free resources that can help to get you more business.
Here is a list I created of 10 free steps that will jump start your business using social media technologies. Do it yourself or call New Tricks to do it for you, but please do it! You will be glad you did.
- Google your business name and find out what comes up. Do you come up? Is it what you want to see? Does your business site come up or maybe a Yelp listing, or listing on some other site? Are those links correct, if not some of them allow you to “claim” your business so you can and correct the info, add pics and so forth. Are you satisfied with your placement or do you have work to do?
- Set up a Google Profile for your personal name so people can find you and your business. Add all of your websites or links to it.
- Add your company or “claim” your business on Google Places which puts you on Google Maps and adds your link to the top of a search page. YUou can describe your business, add reviews and add photos. Complete all of the profile to maximize your benefit and the data should match what you have on your website since Google knows.
- Ask your friends/employees/clients to give you feedback on your current website. Get a free consultation on your current website from a web designer who builds content management websites. There are new technologies available ( WordPress for one) that make it easy to have a great site that you can maintain yourself and use as the hub of your Social Media activities.
- Sign up for Google Alert on your business name or brand. What are people saying about you or your business?
- Set up Social Media Sites. Definitely start with a personal Facebook, a Twitter and a LinkedIn account and go ahead and fill out your entire profile to include a real photo of yourself. On your personal Facebook page do not make it only about your business, these are your fiends and they want to hear about you. Then add a Facebook Fan Page for your business. Describe your business and regularly promote your products. Work it. Have posts on your website automatically post to Facebook and LinkedIn. Promote other things you come across, whether it be a great blog post or news item that your readers might be interested in. Recommend people you have worked with on Linked-In.
- Get a Hoot Suite account to direct your status updates to Twitters or your Facebook Fan Page, ( multiple Twitter accounts and to Facebook Fan and Personal pages) and have full function of bity urls and pics on your tweets. This is a huge Time saver. It is command central for your Social Media.
- Create an e-mail signature that contains your contact information including social media addresses, blogs, websites and logo. You can add this pre-formatted signature to each and every e-mail you send out. You can easily add a text signature but we have a great post on adding a photo to your Gmail signature.
- Google Social Media and find a few people that you like what your hear. Subscribe to their blogs or follow them on Twitter. Ask people who you admire who they follow.
- Go to the Gravitar ( globally recognized avatar) website and add your profile picture. This photo will appear whenever you leave a comment on a Gravitar enabled website. Use the same avatar everywhere, on all of your profiles. Better to use you then your business logo.
Have fun. The cool thing is all of these things are totally FREE. Social Media Guru, Seth Godin says,
The problem is no longer budget. The problem is no longer access to tools. The problem is the will to get good at it.
Remember this: Three frogs were sitting on a log. One decides to jump in. How many frogs are sitting on the log? Three. One decided to jump in – but he didn’t actually jump in. So jump on in. It’s never too late. But you need to go ahead and jump.
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.
Part two of the presentation was given by Judi Knight of New Tricks.
