Posts from the ‘Blogging’ Category

Today’s entrepreneur has a lot of choices when it comes to creating a new website for their business. One of the fastest is to customize one of the thousands of premium WordPress themes available. Another choice is to create a fully custom site. A third choice is to use a combination of both.

That’s the tip of the consideration iceberg.

As more and more people use their mobile devices – phones and tablets – we also need to consider how our clients and customers will be finding us and consuming the information we provide. That means creating a website that works on desktops and laptops, mobile phones and tablet computers.

I’ve been driving myself nuts with this stuff lately as I redesign my site and blog. Reading about design, responsiveness, usability, web typography, how people use the web, looking at web stats, and developing ChecklistApp haven’t helped much.

There are so many choices. So which way to go? Simple.

The bottom line is this: before doing a redesign of your business blog or website look at the who, what, when, where, why and how behind your customer for guidance.

Here’s 6 questions you need to answer about your customer:

1. Who is your customer?
2. What do they want to know?
3. When do they want to know it?
4. Where do they look for the information?
5. Why do they need the information?
6. How will they get the information?

These 6 questions determine the foundational structure of your website. Here’s how you can use the answers.

1. Who is your customer: how you word all of your content and position your company
2. What do they want to know: core site content and blog topics (content strategy), navigation, tags & categories
3. When do they want to know it: SEO, social media,and  email marketing strategies
4. Where do they look for the information: SEO, social media, forums and other methods of peer information sharing
5. Why do they need the information: positioning of content
6. How will they get the information (literally): device support (desktop/laptop, mobile)

Don’t Get Lost Down The Rabbit Hole

It’s very easy. Start with the who, what, when, where, why and how of your customer and you’ll have a site designed to aid  the self-education of your future customers and help them become your current customers.

Recommended Articles To Help Your Decision Making

Connected Devices Become Key to Content Consumption - eMarketer

Expectations and Experience are the New Competition – Marketing Interactions (saved via Reability)

Collaging: Getting Answers To The Questions You Don’t Know To Ask – Smashing Magazine

Typically having a Twitter feed on your blog takes up valuable website real estate and could even be seen as fairly self-centered. However there are exceptions to every rule and this is one of those times!

When A Twitter Feed On Your Blog Doesn’t Make Sense

A very common mistake I see people making is that they only show their own tweets. That’s kind of the point of Twitter – to show your tweets. There is no valid reason for doing this though I’m open to discuss it in the comments. Instead, add a Twitter follow button to your blog so people can “opt-in” to your tweets.

Other than that there are many times you can one. Let’s see what they are.

When A Twitter Feed On Your Blog Makes Sense

After the Internet became aware that GoDaddy helped draft a horrible bill that would cripple free speech on the Internet – SOPA – the backlash erupted. First the marketards at GoDaddy decided to post that there were some unhappy customers but there was “no impact to their business.” I’m not sure how you could say FU any better, hence marketards.

That really got people’s blood boiling and a boycott was formed against GoDaddy and other companies that support SOPA (many of which have since withdrawn their support). Well GoDaddy waffled like a politician but it didn’t stop the mass exodus. This is where one of my clients comes into play and I get to my point.

Anthony Eden and his brother Darrin launched DNSimple over a year ago to simplify hosted DNS. As you can imagine they were in a fantastic position when the GoDaddy backlash hit. Here’s why:

1. They are software developers that created a service for software developers, that’s also good for marketers
2. They provide excellent, highly personalized customer service on their support site and via Twitter
3. Their site, as the name implies, is super easy to use – no upsells and very user-centric
4. People talk about how great their service is on social media

All planets aligned.

I added a Twitter widget to the DNSimple blog that shows what other people are saying about them. That’s the key right there – the mentions of other people without anything from the company itself.

Here’s a screenshot:

Ah the Twitter goodness!

Why This One Works

This Twitter blog widget works for a few reasons:

1. People are speaking very well of the company. When people visit the DNSimple blog they see a business that people are so happy with they mention them publicly.
2. Many people are recommending DNSimple to their friends, recommendations that blog visitors will see.
3. As with anything social media the pictures put faces to names and make what is effectively a live testimonial that much stronger.

Often times the first impression someone gets of your and your company is a visit to your blog. If they see you speaking of nothing but yourself that impression won’t be a good one. However if they see people recommending your service and speaking highly about you that impression will be very powerful.

Three (Possible) Exceptions To The Rule

These are borderline as they violate what I said in the beginning of this post about not being an egomaniac and only showing your own tweets. But let’s see them anyhow.

Exception #1: You have a business with multiple employees and want to show the personal tweets of all your employees.

Exception #2: You have a network of blogs and want to bring together all the tweets from all the blogs in one place.

Exception #3: You’re an enormous company with many blogs and many employees and want to show all the tweets from all blogs and employees in one place.

The third exception applies to a little (as in world famous) company named Saatchi & Saatchi. Here’s a screenshot of their SaatchiNow site:

This one page contains the latest updates from:

1. All of the blogs in their network, in two formats
2. Tweets from their blogs and employees in their global offices
3. Facebook updates
4. Flickr photos
5. Foursquare checkins

Information overload? Never heard of it.

Adding The Smarter Twitter Blog Widget

The WordPress plugin I’m using on DNSimple is the aptly named Twitter Feed for WordPress plugin from Pleer. Here’s how to get it up and running:

1. Log into WordPress and go to Plugins -> Add New
2. Search for “Twitter Feed for WordPress”
3. There are two plugins with the same name to be sure to install the latest version of the plugin by author Alex Moss
4. Activate!
5. Next go to Appearance -> Widgets
6. Add a text widget to your sidebar and use one of the provided shortcodes provided on the Pleer site

Not sure what a shortcode is? Here’s the one I’m using on the DNSimple blog:

[twitter-feed username="dnsimple" mode="mentions" tweetintent="no"]

Something awesome about this plugin is that it automatically includes the Twitter follow button along with the tweets.

Final Thoughts

This is one of those cases where an exception to a “rule” can make a lot of sense. Also, because we’re working with a blog here – something completely digital – we can add and remove these widgets at will. If you find that the Twitter mentions aren’t getting the results you want simply remove the widget.

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