Wait! It’s not what it sounds like, trust me! This past weekend, I decided to give my site a little face-lift, and as a result, I perused through the WP plugin site. I stumbled upon this new plugin called, “SexyBookmarks.” Now, I’m not going to lie. When I first saw the name of the plugin, I had no idea what to expect. However, it has quickly turned into one of my favorite WordPress plugins! I am on many social media sites, and most of the people who read my blog, are too. “SexyBookmarks” functionality and flow is probably the best out of any plugins that try to accomplish the same purpose. It allows you to put a list of several social networking sites on top of every post, which in turn allows the reader to share the post with his or her social network on any of the several sites listed! The best part, is that it takes just one click, for the reader to share the post. We all know, that people may want to share your post with others, however, you want to make it as simple as possible because if it takes multiple steps, chances are the reader will not end up sharing it. It also allows you to add a background image to hover over the site options, so that you can add a seamlessly little bit of personality to your blog.

Here’s the link to the plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexybookmarks/

This past weekend, I attended WordCamp Miami. It was the first time I had ever attended a WordCamp, but I can tell you that it won’t be the last time I attend one! I really don’t have anything negative to say about the experience. The sessions were great, the people were friendly, and the amount of information that was spewed was unmatched to anything that I’ve ever seen before. I actually chose to stay on the Social Media Track the entire day, because I felt like that was what applied most to what I do and plan to do in the future. It was a great choice, and I’ve already been able to implement several things that I learned this past weekend. If you ever have the chance to ever make it to a WordCamp, I would HIGHLY recommend that you check it out. You won’t regret, I know I didn’t!

*P.S. If you weren’t able to make it to WordCamp, here are the links to all of my notes from WordCamp Miami:

- Jim Turner’s (From Daddy Blogger to Business Blogger)

- Gary Bacon’s (The Legal Side of Blogging)

- Jess Jurick’s (Finding Your Blogging Voice)

- Brian Breslin’s (How to Make Your Blog Social)

- Angie Moncada’s (Writing For a Professional Blog)

- Tammy Hart’s (Wordpress and Working With Clients)

- Lisa D. Spark’s (The Power of Email Marketing)

- Jim Gilbert’s (Engaging and Driving Traffic With Blogs)

Word Camp Miami – ( @GilbertDirect )

- Business Site: http://gilbertdirectmarketing.wordpress.com/

- Slideshow Presentation Link: http://www.slideshare.net/jimdirect

- Two case studies to present

• Consumer: The Fresh Diet
• B2B- The Gilbert Direct Marketing Blog

The 3 Immutable Laws of Social Media Marketing

• Brand + Time = Revenue
• Brand + Channels = Revenue
• Brand + Time + Channels = Advocates

1. New Multichannel marketing model for the 21st century

- Strategy Engagement Circle

• Blog content. FaceBook. Twitter. Email. Website. Youtube. Book marking sites. Blog content.
• Link back content to your blog

- Put a human face to a nameless faceless entity

- Run contests. Great involvement and incentive.

• They reinforce how you feel about your brand
• We live in the age of peer to peer sales
• People love to buy, but hate to be sold
• Social media allows customers to find you
• Contest Examples

1. Tell us your worst diet ever (win a free week)
2. Tell us your favorite meal
3. Tell us why you chose the Fresh Diet

- Track results with bit.ly

- Make sure RSS, blog updates via email, and newsletter sign-ups are prominent.

- Goals of Blog:

• Build credibility
• Build a following
• Generate clients
• Become a better writer (I’m a frustrated writer. I’ve got that great american novel in me somewhere.)

- Still host on Wordpress.com, because it’s easier! He said, ” I have no clue about Wordpress.org. MYSQL (pronounced: my sequel)? I didn’t even know I had an orginal?!” // Line of the day.

- Online Address Book: Plaxo

- Get on Linkedin

• Post new blog post to “News” section. It drove large amounts of traffic to the blog, and only takes about 25 minutes.

- Join direct graphic groups, but also join complimentary groups. It’ll help diversify the pool of potential clients!

Word Camp Miami – ( @LisaDSparks )

- Business Site: www.constantcontact.com

- It takes relationships to build a business

- Advantages of Email Marketing for WP Bloggers

• Develop stronger relationship with your readers
• Emailing monthly digest of top spots
• Measure results of email campaigns (easily)

- Stronger handle on amount of “readers” outside of RSS

- Control communications outside of Feedburner auto-email of posts

- Craft promotions/messages to followers/subscribers

- Create powerful connections and income streams

- Example: www.preemopc.com

- Constant Contact Plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/constant-contact-signup-form-widget/

- Form Generator: www.seodenver.com/constant-contact-forms-generator

- Thought: Create a monthly digest of your posts. Instead of emailing every time you post. It’s more targeted, and more likely to get more comments.

- Email Marketing helps you find FANS within the MASSES:

• 7 Touches before sale occurs
• Use email to continue upsell process
• Retain happy customers for life with your personality. SHARE!

- Email Marketing is:

• Delivering professional email communications to a group of people.

- Boulder Arts and Crafts Gallery

• Problem: Needed to clear out excess inventory
• Solution: Sent 25 % off discount email to list of 1600
• Result: Got $4000 within 10 hours.

- Duck Tours

• Problem: Grow interest in the tours year round
• Solution: Send targeted campaigns to groups such as schools, religious, and community organizations
• Result: 153% increase in revenue over a three year period

- How Tracking Works

• Email. ESP. Tracking Code. Interaction.

- Don’t email too often, you WILL be marked as spam.

- Provide incentives for people giving you their email address.

- New Plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/constant-contact-api/

- Keep a content folder to keep everything organized.

- List of Article/Content Resources

• www.copyblogger.com
• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.bluepenguindevelopment.com

Word Camp Miami – ( @TammyHart )

- Cool Site: http://pasteinteractive.com/

- Personal Site: www.tammyhartdesigns.com

- Slideshow Presentation Link: http://www.slideshare.net/tammyhart/word-press-working-with-clients

- Sales Pitch

• How do I sell WordPress to my clients?
• Wordpress is much cheaper and easier, than writing code from scratch.
• What do they Need?

1. Low cost
2. Content Management
3. Good support
4. Room for Growth
5. Customizability
6. Do it yourself maintenance
7. Media tools
8. Keep in touch with audience
9. Scalability

• What Would WordPress Do?

1. It’s free!
2. Easy to use admin interface
3. Unmatched community
4. Add content now and later
5. Thousands of themes and plug-ins
6. Easy as writing an email
7. Built in tools and plugins
8. Multiple subscription options
9. Caching helps! (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/)

- Ford, Wall Street Journal, People, CNN, and Mozilla all use WordPress.

- Design and Function

• How do we decide what their website will look like and do?
• Don’t be scared to say no, or make demands to a client. Set rules and guidelines.
• Where Do You Start?

1. Ask Questions
2. Budget
3. Timeline Examples and Models
4. Current Design Resources
5. Start them with a list of functions
6. Don’t be afraid to suggest a better way
7. Make sure they will have all the essentials

• What Can Wordpress Do?

1. Customize a ready theme
2. Start from Scratch

• All Your essentials

1. Static content
2. Blog/News
3. Thousands of Widgets
4. Contact Forms
5. Social Media Integration
6. Subscription Integration ( Suma Plugin )
7. Flutter ( Example : http://www.pasadenasymphony-pops.org/ )

- Freedom of Speech: http://www.march18.org/

- WordPress Hosting: http://page.ly/

- Content

• Get started off right

1. Develop a site map first
2. Set and enforce deadlines
3. When your’e designing, they should be writing

• Use the right tools

1. Set up their Wordpress site before designing
2. Jumpchart ( www. jumpchart.com ) (Get 3 free months with code: tammy )
3. Use plugins to manage pages
4. pageMash > Page Management
5. My Page Order

- Walkthrough

• Few Steps:

1. De-clutter the dashboard
2. Set up their multiple user accounts for them
3. Install the essential plugins for them
4. Do a live walkthrough
5. Advise them of upgrades
6. Offer a list of resources

• Remember:

1. WordPress is easy!
2. Give support after launch!

Word Camp Miami – ( @AngieMoncada )

- Business Site: http://addventures.com/

- Personal Site: http://thevirtualwatercooler.wordpress.com/

- Make sure that your online presence and your real presence is the same thing

- It’s not about how great you are, it’s about what you believe.

- Inform. Inspire. Recruit. Retain.

- How do you do it?

- Step 1: Listen to What People Are Saying

- Step 2: Figure Out What You Have to Contribute

• What’s your passion. What do you bring to the table?
• Make your blog slightly personal, but not too personal. Still keep it professional.
• People will buy stuff from people that they know and trust.
• In order to establish credibility, you need to maintain a little bit of professionalism.

-Step 3: Find People Who Can Do It

• Build a team! You can’t do it alone. You’re going to run out of things to say, or write about, but have a team that can come along side you to help, or even inspire.
• Have a guest blogger once in a while, or maybe interview someone.

- Step 4: Craft a Plan and Process to Get It Done

• You can plan all you like, but you need to actually get it done.
• You usually want to do everything, but then life happens, and takes that away.
• Be honest with yourself, and be honest with your time schedule. Create a plan that suites your life, and stick to it. Be realistic, you’re probably not going to post everyday, because us techies are all over the place doing different things. We’re not the most organized.
• Instead of giving something up for Lent, she decided to do something. She is going to actually blog, every single day, for 40 days.
• Have an accountability partner, if you think life is going to get in the way.

- Step 5: Do It.

- Step 6: Keep Doing It In New Ways

- Step 7: Listen. Respond. Repeat

- Spend one day at the park and take an hour, to write 100 things to talk about on your blog. What perspective do you have, that others don’t? What are 100 things that YOU have to say?

- Keep your blog fresh. Keep it evolving.

- It’s not about you. It’s about them. You’re not writing a blog for yourself, your’e writing a blog to connect with people. It’s about THEM.

- Look back at your blog, a year ago, and see how far you’ve come. You’ll see the evolution of yourself over the past year.

- Keep a couple of editorial calendars, to organize your thoughts and blog.

Word Camp Miami – (@BrianBreslin )

- Personal Site: www.brianbreslin.com

- Founder of REFRESH: Miami

- What does it mean to be social?

• To communicate with other people.
• How do you integrate your social graph (social networks).
• Connect your site to social networks
• Make your blog as sociable as you!

- Social Networks? Build up or build on.

• Build on top of existing social networks. Less friction, already have the following.
• Integrate Facebook Connect (http://www.sociable.es/facebook-connect/)
• Use BuddyPress if you want to build up.
• However, there is some friction involved when using BuddyPress, because people are not going to want to sign up for another social site. Just leverage Facebook, if you have it.

- Putting the social in your social media

• Bookmarking Sites (Delicious, Digg, Reddit)
• Social browsing sites (StumbleUpon)

- Turning your blog viral

• If you simply use your site, you spread it.
• Make reading your blog infectious
• Think of viral, as the flu. You don’t intentionally go out and give your friends the flu. Simply by breathing, and being you, you spread the content.
• Turn your readers into your promoters.

- Best Practices

• Understand the culture of social networks. Don’t force your culture into sites or communities where they don’t belong. Be relevant, it’ll have a higher rate of return. Don’t just blast your content to every site. Be intentional. Be specific.
• Treat the community with respect.
• Don’t think of your blog as a destination site. Most people visit an average of 12 sites a day. To get in that rotation of 12 sites, is freakin hard! You’re going to have to go through social media marketing, not just simply by blogging. Most of the visitors to your blog will stumble onto your blog by Digg or similar sites.
• Engage your community wherever THEY want to.

- Things to Avoid

• Spamming? Seriously. Stop it.
• Treating it as a one way outbound communication. Social media/marketing is a two way street. It’s an open conversation, that’s why there are Trackbacks in Wordpress.
• Diving in without testing things out first.

- Simplifying social

• Plugins to Integrate

1. Sharethis
2. Sociable
3. Disqus

- Role of SEO in Social Blogging

• Prepare your content for consumption
• Prepare your content for distribution
• Best SEO Plug-In

- The future of the social blog

• Distributed social networks (DISO)
• Identity Providers (OpenID)
• Activity hubs (activity.streams)

- Useful tips

• Set up a list of goals (more traffic, audience, engagement)
• Focus on your efforts on your niche (where do they hang out)
• It’s all about the content

- Q and A

• Ning is a great way to create your own social site. However, if you build off NING, you hand over all of your info about your users to NING. If you want to move from NING, you’re screwed. All of the info is theirs.
• Also, NING has 3 million users, but the average NING network has 9 people. It might just be easier to leverage Facebook.

- Selling + Story-Telling

• Southwest Blog
• Wordpress.com Blog by Matt Mullenweg

- Voice + Loyal Readers = Friends when times are rough.

- Top Tips

• Read a lot
• Use Twitter as your NewsFeed
• Brainstorm often
• Write from different perspectives
• Go out and meet people
• Use social media to actually go out in the real world and be social
• See the world
• Don’t be afraid to share your story
• Fake it until you make it
• Express your voice through titles on your blog posts. It’ll catch the reader’s attention.

Word Camp Miami – @Genuine

- What are the best blog designs and software?

- Look at who is getting awards for blogging. Who had the best following? Who had the best blog traffic?

- What sites are the bloggers blogging from. What sites are they commenting on? What sites do they follow?

- Mommy blogger: Duece

• Story of rag to riches, to riches, to riches!

- www.genuineblog.com (Personal Site)

- Traffic Number = 7000 people ever 10 minutes at the highest peak. Live blogged two births!

- Update regularly. Be funny. Get involved with your community and target.

- Daddy Blogging and What You Get Back

• Search Engine Optimization
• Spent no budget on marketing or SEO.
• Wordpress is more efficient and more affordable.
• A lot of negative feedback, but also will receive instant and positive customer service./feedback.
• Build a brand.
• Be seen as an expert in whatever you blog about. What is your target field?
• Engage in conversation.
• Everybody has an opinion, and they all want to leave it on your blog.
• Build an army of blog evangelists.
• Metric/Analytics and Data
• You don’t feel like a blogger, until you receive that first comment from someone who isn’t your mom.

- Like Daddy’s tool box, a blog is nothing more than a tool we use.

• If you’re a blogger, you have the potential to be a business owner

- Tips for Business Blogger

• Identify your assets. What is your passion? What is your knowledge?
• Identify who the cool kids are. Businesses always want to know who is in their cool kid group.
• If you’re a yarn manufacturer, who is your biggest yarn blogger?
• Who influences blogs relevant to your category/area of blogging.
• Go out and participate in the community. Become a member of the cool kid’s club. One you’re in that club, you’re in for good.
• Add value to your community.
• Lead by example. Start trends in blogging and in your own community.
• Don’t push me. Don’t push or buy your way into the cool kids club. If you don’t push your way in, you’ll be accepted. If THEY invite you to the cool kid’s party, you’ll always be on the list.
• Have fun! When you talk about what you love, your passion will come out, and you will have fun!

- Q and A Session

• FTC regulations.
• Believe in complete disclosure for companies that use bloggers.
• Great to hire bloggers for your business, because they will bring traffic and leads.
• Encourage your clients to be bloggers as well. They are the ones who are in the mix, and their voice cannot be lost. They are the ones who are actually passionate about what they love and what they do!
• The difficulty of finding a blogger, is finding a blogger who believes in your business.
• Don’t become a professional blogger, about something you don’t really like. Match up bloggers with like-minded businesses.