I’ve been making a few updates to my site today and was frustrated by not seeing the changes showing up immediately, in real-time, after saving. This is annoying to me, because I am used to clicking the save button in content management sites where changes are instant. So trial and error is my friend today and if you’re reading this, hopefully my trial and error will save you from having to do it in the future. After an hour or so of investigation, I discovered that if you are saving changes in widgets and/or files in the Appearance editor, the changes don’t show until you have published or updated a blog post. Eureka! So simple right? Right!
Well if you missed it, here it is again: If you are struggling to see a change you made in a widget or on in files in the editor under the Appearance tab, try publishing a new post or even just updating one of your previous posts. Then review the other change you were trying to make. You will see the changes take effect immediately.
For example, I was changing the text in sidebar.php and it wasn’t updating on the live site. Finally after posting something and publishing, the text changes in the sidebar showed. Another issue was that I was trying to format my mailing list sign up widget (a form created with Google Spreadsheets) and it wasn’t letting me control the scrollbars. Update a post and Voila! scrollbars are gone.
This must have something to do with the way WordPress handles posts versus pages. The “save” button in pages and widgets is almost like a save to draft, in that there is a slight delay before you see the changes. Publishing posts seems to publish the whole site, i.e. all changes that have been saved are now published to the LIVE public site.
Another problem solved. Now I just need to remember it for the next time I am making edits to widgets or in the editor. Hopefully this post will joggle my memory and yours.
Have you had any similar experiences with WordPress?
When you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work. In fact it feels more like being on vacation. Last week I was on vacation in Salt Lake City Utah. I was snowboarding at a fabulous resort called Snowbird. Snowboarding Snowbird! Lucky me indeed!
I snowboarded for three days and then took a day off from vacation to get some work done. If work is work for you, you’re probably thinking I’m crazy, but if you really love what you do, you understand the meaning of work being fun. When work is fun and fulfilling it makes you smile, it’s motivating, it can make you laugh and feel happy. Admittedly I was a bit concerned that I enjoyed my day off from vacation so much, but then I looked at this video created by Click to Play Media and saw how happy this work makes me.
The video came out of an opportunity to consult with a very interesting start-up called iConfident. The make dental implant software to help dental professionals improve communication, build loyalty, and grow their practice. We looked at their website in terms of search engine optimization and discussed social media opportunities. Susby was collaborating with Click to Play Media who graciously produced this one minute video about Susby in the process. I think you can tell that how much fun it was. On days like this I really love my job.
BIG thank yous to Anna, Brad and Stephanie at Click to Play Media and also to Rob, Robbie and Karoline of iConfident for allowing us to shoot.
My advice to you if you’re not enjoying what you do: Find a way to play more. Do something that makes you smile, i.e. Do what you love, the money will follow. Connect, collaborate and start some conversations. The world revolves around relationships and communication and both are equally important.
Amidst all the iPad (or as some say “iBad”) hype, Google announced that it’s social search is now out of labs and in it’s infamous beta testing phase. Beta for Google means it’s available to you to use while they test it, but for most of us, that means it’s ready. Yes, they will continue tweaking it before it is out of Beta, but they have been known to have products in Beta for several years. Gmail being no exception.
A moving picture is worth more than a thousand words, so take a look at Google’s introduction to keeping the web as social as it is below. Otherwise, see Google’s blogpost – how social!
Is Google trying to get you out of Facebook and back onto their site? Please leave a comment.
Several posts ago I talked about LOVE being the secret to social media. Well Starbucks has been doing their L-Listening and came up with this response to the “Where the Hell Is Matt?” movie which took the web by storm a few years ago, and also the wild success of the T-Mob Dance videos where people break out in dance at random train stations to the thrilling surprise of commuters.
The game to be the most viral video on the net is on and all the big brands are playing. Did you see Coke’s Happiness Machine? It’s not show me the money in social media, it’s show me the LOVE!
Starbucks is really playing to win though, because they’re playing on your heart-strings too. If you watch the movie all the way to the end, they ask you to share it, because for every voice added they donate to Fighting Aids in Africa. How charitable! How giving. How… loving?
The companion (campaign) website is also executed with lots of love. Check out the photo gallery displaying the ultimate in interactivity and enabling people to share the love through various social loveworks, I mean social networks.
What do you think of this strategy? Is it getting overplayed? Are you still enamored? Are you still in-love? Please share the love… um, I mean your comments below.
P.S. Use red for LOVE and remember… Love is all you need. xoxox
Since you’re reading this post, you either already know that I am Susan Barnes, or you found me through a search for “Susan Barnes.”
“So what?” you say. Well, as of the date of this post there are 1,130,000 results for a search on “Susan Barnes.” This number is likely to continue growing dramatically, so if you’re stumbling upon this post months or years after it was uploaded, look at the number of search results for Susan Barnes now.
How many search results does your name show on Google? Simply enter your name into the search box, and you’ll see either how common your name is, or how famous you are on Google. The higher the number of search results, the more common your name, and the more challenging it will be for you to get a first page ranking on Google or any other search engine for that matter, unless you control all the listings, because no-one else with your name is doing anything worth mentioning.
Since Susan Barnes is a very common name and there are several Susan Barnes’ with strong online presences (and also quite importantly that I am passionate about search engines,) I am intrigued by the phenomenon of getting a good ranking for your name on Google.
A recent book called Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot recommend that if you are hiring anyone to do any web, social media or online marketing work for you, you must confirm that they have a good digital footprint. This means that if you were looking to hire Susan Barnes to help you with Internet Marketing or Social Media, you would want her name and profile to have a high ranking on the first page of Google.
Today (January 6, 2010) if you Google “Susan Barnes” you’ll see results for Susan Barnes the actress, Susan Barnes the author, who also has the Susan Barnes Twitter handle. There’s Susan Barnes the realtor in Orlando, Florida, Susan Barnes the Firegoddess jewelry maker, Susan Barnes the painter in Mendocino, California, (incidentally I used to do a lot of oil painting in college too,) Susan Barnes the writer, Susan Barnes the art historian, Susan Barnes the social media expert on the east coast, among 1,129,990 others. There’s even a Susan Barnes somewhere back east who has no period in her gmail account (susanbarnes @ gmail . com) where my personal email is susan . barnes @ gmail . com and for I frequently get her mail. This is very disconcerting, since I’m sure she is likely getting my mail as well. When is Google going to fix this problem? Larry? Sergei?
As I write this post, the Susan Barnes that is me, is indeed listed on the first page of Google, but currently only because I have a Google profile. So lesson number one for those of you with common names like “Susan Barnes,” make sure you create your public Google profile.
Susan Barnes
Other ways to get your name listed at the top of a Google search:
2. Be someone that other people want to write about, i.e. get your name eg. Susan Barnes linked from websites that don’t belong to you. This is the same for keywords and search engine optimization. If your keyword appears in link text, it has more value to a search engine.
3. Use your name as your handle in Social Networks. This particular Susan Barnes did not do that, because there are too many Susan Barnes’ in the world (yes I am a bit bitter… grrrrrrr) and when I tried to get SusanBarnes on Facebook, SusanBarnes on Twitter they were already taken. I am Susan Barnes Internet Solutions Consultant on LinkedIn, where I was able to use my name as my handle. I am using Susby on Facebook, Susby on Twitter and Susan Barnes on LinkedIn.
For good examples/role models, see George Kao,Chris Brogan, or Brian Solis.
4. Write a blog post about yourself like this one.
5. Register a domain name with your name it, like susanbarnes.com, susanbarnes.net or susanbarnesauthor.com or susanbarneswriter.com.
6. Use your name in the title tag and meta description of your page or post.
7. Participate in social networks, because reputation is the new currency. Every time you post to Twitter for example, Google is still picking it up and indexing it. What does that tell those of you who can’t fathom why anyone would use Twitter?
8. If all else fails, start a new presence with a catchy name like Shoemoney, Daggle or Susby, but you’ll still need to spend a ton of time blogging, tweeting, updating and participating in order to be considered someone worth listing to Google.
Thank you for reading about the many Susan Barnes’.
Now it’s your turn: What’s your name and how often do you appear in search results?
Google recognizes the power of the social connectors (aka social media) by showing real-time search results including content from Facebook and Twitter. Google is unveiling the “Latest Results” which will show tweets from Twitter streams, updates from Facebook, answers from YahooAnswers and more. To me this indicates the power of real-time results. The freshest content and opinions are what searchers are interested in. Google obviously respects the power of the crowd and continues to believe in us. After all, we are the people who power Google. Google both serves us and we serve them by clicking on ads. It’s a symbiotic relationship. I wonder if they will start showing Aardvark results as well.
On Sunday, I gave a presentation on Social Media for Market Research in Michaela Hayes‘ Market Research class for the Green MBA Program students at Dominican University of California.
In working on the deck, I came up with a new way to remember your what your social media plan should include. And it’s so easy to remember, because it spells the word LOVE. We all love to be loved, to be in love, to give love and to get love and that’s what social media is all about. It’s about LOVE.
L = Listen
O = Offer
V = Visit
E = Engage
Listen
Listening is one of the best ways to show your love for someone. You can’t have a conversation unless you are listening to the other person, (think your ideal audience) and asking them questions about how they are and what makes them happy. If you haven’t started listening in the social media space, a good place to start is with Google Alerts. Simply enter the name of your product, business, favorite person or project, and alerts will send you emails detailing any mentions of your interest on the web.
Twitter’s search allows you to see what peeps are tweeting about in the Twittersphere. Enter a few keyword phrases into search.twitter.com and see who is talking about it in on Twitter. Find the people you want to follow and join the global conversation.
Collecta.com is another way to get real time results and listen to the buzz about your product or industry online.
And a little out of the box, but still part of listening, is asking questions of your network: On Facebook, I dare you to ask your friends their opinion of __________ and on LinkedIn, pose a question to one of the groups you are a member of. You’ll be amazed at the number and quality of responses.
Offer
Having something to offer the love of your life is always a good thing, so think about what you can offer your ideal audience in your social networks as well. Are you sharing links to valuable content with them? Are you posting humorous videos, inspirational quotes, or even just quippy remarks. Whatever you are offering keeps you top of mind for the people that see your posts and that is always a good thing, because when they are thinking of referring a friend to an expert in your field, hello, you’re it.
Visit
What would a relationship be without visits? You have to spend time with someone in order to get to know them, silly. So go and visit some blogs about your favorite product, or topic. Post a comment or two and join the conversation. It may not lead to your next million right now, but it will make you feel good and allow you to practice sharing the love.
Engage
Yes, you’ve reached that point in the relationship when it’s time to pop the question. Is this a relationship with long term potential or mutual benefit? To engage your ideal audience, you need to add value, spark their attention, keep them informed and be top of mind. You want your ideal audience to think of you as an expert, a friend, a confident and someone with whom having a long term relationship will be good, so treat them with respect and show them some love.
Contests and giveaways work well for engaging as does plain old GOOD CONTENT!
So, my friends, here’s my advice to you: For best results in social media, think L.O.V.E.
Susan
Video can be a very effective way to inform your customers and potential customers about your product.
I recently consulted with a very interesting company called iConfident in San Francisco’s Northbeach neighborhood. They create web-based software, which enables dentists and dental professionals to collaborate and communicate with great ease on things like dental implant parts.
I was working with them as part of a new venture with Click To Play Media and I was extremely impressed to learn of the success of a video produced by Click To Play Media, which has helped iConfident increase referrals by 70%. By adding the video to their “tell-a-colleague” form, they found that 70% more doctors and dentists were likely to send the referral along to their colleagues for a free trial as opposed to when there was no video. That is a huge difference.
So why is video so effective? Because the moving image is the closest thing to real life. If a video is well done, it can tell a story in a much shorter amount of time than it would take someone to read a description and it is easier to digest, because it is inherently entertaining and interesting. If you think about it, with moving pictures and audio, you have a much richer experience and it is far easier to grasp the gist of the story or idea. Since it’s more like You, you respond to it more quickly than plain text.
Click To Play Media captured testimonials of professionals using the product in a way that makes it easy for doctors who haven’t heard about the product understand the benefits and how iConfident can increase efficiency and save them money.
If you’re interested in creating a video for your company or product, please visit Click to Play Media and tell Anna you were referred by Susby.
Remember, without measurement, there is no success. You have to measure and track whatever you are doing to know how much progress you are making.
Without a goal, there is no where to go, no finish line, no end, and without benchmarks you have no idea where you are, or where the starting line is. So, let’s see where we are in terms of traffic to our websites and blogs and then set some goals so that we can start our journey to accomplish them.
Below is a step by step process for putting a Google Analytics tracking code on your site or blog. If you don’t have a website or blog, then this post is probably not for you, but it you are interested in learning more about how to track visits to your site or blog, for free and with less than 15 minutes of set up time, please follow the instructions below.
If you don’t have a blog, set one up at http://www.blogger.com
You may need to create a Google Account to do this.
Once you have set up your blog. Create a few posts or entries about something you are interested in.
View your blog and copy the URL (from the address bar) of your blog
Once you are logged in, look for the “Add Website Profile” link
2011-11-11 Update: If you don’t see the Add Website Profile link, look on the right hand side of the screen for “My Analytics Accounts: Select an account” and a drop down menu. Select “Create New Account” at the bottom of the drop down menu.
Click the Sign Up >> button
Paste your URL into the Add a Profile for a new domain field. It is important that you paste YOUR URL, i.e. only a website address or blog address that you have control of. You can NOT track a website or blog that you do not control. You may only track your own sites and blog.
Click the Continue >> button
Enter your Last Name and First Name and select your country, then click the Continue >> button
Agree to the terms and conditions by checking the box and then click the Create New Account >> button
Copy the script code on the following screen where you see “2. Paste this code onto your site.”
In blogger, go back to your blog and get to the dashboard, i.e. click new post or edit posts. In your website, you will be copying the script into each page, just before the closing </head> tag. If you have a website set up with a template, you may only need to do this once in a footer file. (If you are not using Blogger, skip to step 15.)
In Blogger, click on the Design tab, and then
Click on the Edit HTML link
Do a find [on a Windows machine, hold down the Ctrl + F keys at the same time, on a Mac hold down Command +F] for </head> in the HTML code page. Add a line break before you paste so that it works well.
Save the template and/or your work if you are not in blogger.
Go back to Google Analytics, which you still have open in another window or tab, and click “Save and Finish”
You will see a yellow triangle with an exclamation point in it. IMPORTANT: It takes 24 hours for the tracking to start happening. If everything is working correctly, in an hour or two, you should see a clock symbol, meaning that Google is “waiting for data.” Check back in 24 hours to make sure the tracking is working and ask your friends to visit your site or blog so that you can see some activity. When everything is working correctly, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the site when you next log into Google Analytics.
If you have any questions about any of the above steps, please leave a comment. Happy tracking!
For the past few months, I have been fortunate to work with D’Layna Huguez-Dixon, Founder and President of Vocal Downloads for the redesign of the Vocal Downloads website. We were a small team with D’Layna doing a lot of the heavy lifting, I consulting on the project specifications, testing, some Flash animation, graphics optimization and requirements documentation, and one programmer to do all the code changes.
It has been quite a journey and we have finally reached destination number one: Phase 1 launch.
D’Layna’s emails all end with a quote which helps me understand her drive and also why I admire her so much. The quote is:
“If your vision is not your obsession, it will never be in your possession.”
Here’s a picture of before, and be sure to check out the after too.
Vocal Downloads Previously
New Vocal Downloads Design
There are many new features including an annual subscription product, enhanced display of samples with expand and collapse options, new member profile and login functionality and the ability to save samples to your crate for purchasing and downloading later. Oh, and right out of the gate the site has a great website grade in terms of SEO as well.
I am so proud of D’Layna for her persistence and courage on this project. It is a labor of love and D’Layna has shown both the labor and the love in great abundance.
Please check out the redesigned website and let us know if you have any suggestions, observations or recommendations.
