Business Blogging Pros

Dealing with Spam

I know this is off topic but bloggers receive spam too.

I want to tell you about an anti-spam product I'm now using and having tremendous success with.

I receive about 300 spam emails per day.  I'm on a Mac. The Mac email client's built-in spam filtering is pretty good but far too many spam emails were getting through.

A few days ago I installed SpamSieve and the number of spam emails I have to deal with now in a day is maybe a dozen.  And since SpamSieve 'learns', I expect that number will continue to drop.

http://c-command.com/spamsieve/

iThemes Mobile Plugin

In a previous post I briefly talked about WPtouch-Pro. The other top contender for a wordpress mobile plugin is iThemes Mobile pluin in their PluginBuddy series.

I think the time will be here soon - maybe not in 2011 but soon - that mobile compatible sites will be a must-have feature.  We're already seeing that in some verticals.

I also believe that mobile users want different content that desktop browser users.  For example if you are visiting a restaurant's website on your mobile device, you most likely are interested in:

• Location (including map)
• Hours
• Menu
• Specials

As a result, your mobile site needs to be structured differently than your main website.  One of our primary criteria when evaluating mobile plugins/themes was that:

• Be able to create mobile-specific pages with content specifically aimed at the mobile user.
• The mobile site's menu can be configured to display only the mobile pages
• The main website's menu does not display the mobile pages

In other words, it's like having two separate sites in one wordpress installation.

Does iThemes Mobile meet this criteria?  Splendidly.  This theme may not look flashy out-of-the-box but it is very customizable.  Anyone used to tweaking wordpress themes will be very comfortable with iThemes Mobile - more so than WPtouch-Pro.  

iThemes Mobile also seems to have fewer compatibility with main themes that have a website-like front page.

One area that I think is giving many mobile theme developers heartburn is plugin compatibility. You may have a plugin that works great in your main site but would prefer NOT to have in the mobile site.  WPtouch-Pro has a mechanism whereby it tries to ignore plugins that you specify but the mechanism seems less than 100% effective.  iThemes Mobile doesn't have such a function at all.

Mobile Wordpress Musings

At some point in the future (sometime in 2011) whenever we create a blog or website for a client, our plan is to deliver a mobile site as well.  As a result, we're currently evaluating plugins that make any wordpress site mobile-ready.

So far our favorite is WPtouch Pro from BraveNewCode. It provides two important functions that none of the others we tested provide:

• The ability to provide a custom landing page or home page to mobile users. 
• Ability to  specify which site pages are on the menu.

This allows us to essentially create a completely separate mobile site with content optimized specifically for mobile users within the same wordpress installation.

It has several other plusses as well.  Some of the new wordpress mobile themes I'm seeing are graphic intensive.  With the limited bandwidth available to most mobile users, I think heavy use of graphics and images is inappropriate.  WPtouch-Pro looks sharp and impressive without allocating scarce screen space to images and other graphics.

 UPDATE:

Today, working under a tight deadline, I tried to bring wp-touch pro up on a client's site.

The activation key wouldn't work.

I went to the support website and found this:

A company that would do this to it's clients (turn off activation and make its support site go dark) is clearly not serious about its business and should not be relied upon to be there when it counts.

Turning Clients into Social Media Savvy Marketers

"I have a Facebook account and I'm on Twitter but I just don't seem to be getting anywhere."

One of the things that has always differentiated us from other social media experts is our emphasis on the fundamentals of marketing.  The landscape is crowded with people who will set up a website or blog for you pretty inexpensively (it is my opinion however that the blogs and websites we build give you a much more polished and professional appearance).  And there are lots of people claiming to be social media experts.

None of them do what we do:

We teach you to think like a social media-savvy marketer.

We create confident and empowered social media-savvy business owners.

Our clients tell us that while we excel at delivering polished blogs, fan pages, twitter profile pages, and social media-enabled websites, our strength lies in our ability to teach you to be effective with social media.

As a result, we've once again boosted the educational/training aspect of our flagship offering. We're spending even more time with you now.  By the time we complete a 4-6 week engagement with you, together we will have created a social media strategy and roadmap for you. And spent enough one-on-one time with you so that you feel confident and empowered to be in-charge and in control of your own social media destiny.

Of course, all this one-on-one personal attention means that we're a little more expensive than we used to be (but still a lot cheaper than you would think).  If you are looking for a social media firm that makes you feel more like you are in Nordstroms or Nieman-Marcus than Target or Wal-Mart, I invite you to give me a call.

First Shipped Guide to the New TypePad

The first copy of Guide to the New TypePad shipping to a customer:

Blog Makeover

After completing the makeover of the website, I HAD to do something about this blog too.

And I threw down the gauntlet to myself:

"You gotta incorporate of of your websites coolness into the blog."

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you'll see the same 3-D effect that is on my website (It's not as dramatic because the blog page is longer).  That was an easy thing to add thanks to The New TypePad's blog footer feature.

I also included something I've wanted to add for a long time: A Popular Articles page.  It contains blog posts that:

• I find myself referring people to over and over, or:
• My stats show that people are searching for on google.

I also made my inks to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn more prominent.

Pardon the Dust

Things may look a bit odd for a few days while I work on making this blog resemble the new website.

Our New Website. Or 'We Eat Our Own Dog Food'

The Business Blogging Pros website makeover is done.  With this new website I wanted to accomplish several things:

• I wanted to convey that even though our name is Business Blogging Pros, we do more than just blogs and utilize all the significant social media platforms for our clients.
• I wanted a site that is more personna-based.  Each of the rotating photos is clickable and represents a specific problem we solve for a specific kind of customer.
• I felt it important to eat my own dog food.  I advocate the idea that today's top-tier blogging platforms make really good websites as well, so it was important to me that the site be blog-based.

"Are You a Wordpress Convert?"

I guess I'm known as a TypePad kinda guy because I've been getting this question a lot since launching the new site.  I have always tried to pick the best platform based upon my client's present and future needs.  Usually the result of that process is that I pick Typepad but I've put a significant number of clients on Wordpress as well.  By having the website on Wordpress and the Blog on Typepad, I hope i'm demonstrating competency on both platforms.

Guide to the New Typepad

Any day now, Typepad will release The New Typepad.  The good news is that once you get used to it, it's a lot more intuitive.

The bad news is that you have to get used to it.  Everything is different.

To keep you from having to learn Typepad all over again, I have written Guide to Typepad.  It's over 30 pages long and is full of screen shots and detailed step-by-step instructions for all the common (and some not-so-common) tasks.

It's full color and plasti-coil bound.  If I have built a TyperPad blog for you then you will be able to get Guide to Typepad at a greatly-reduced price.  Even at full price it will be a bargain.  If it saves you only 30 minutes of hunting around it will pay for itself.

Stay tuned for more information over the next week or so.

Bluetrain Number 6

Number 6 of 85.

If you are interested in marketing and you don't follow Hugh MacLeod's blog Gapingvoid, you should.  I consider Hugh to be one of the thought leaders in marketing and social media.  A couple of years ago Hugh coined the term Global Microbrand and I've been using it ever since.

Hugh is probably most famous for his cartoons drawn on the back of business cards, later evolving into a line of blogcards/streetcards.  When I saw Wolf vs Sheep for the first time it resonated with me and I have kept a supply of Wolf vs Sheep blog cards on hand ever since. (I also have the Wolf vs Sheep signed numbered print but framing will have to wait).

When Hugh announced that he would be offering Bluetrain as the first in a series of numbered, signed, fine-art lithographs, I had to have one.  I've finally managed to get a custom frame made for it with museum glass.

It hangs on the wall in my office facing me.  All I have to do is to lift my eyes from the monitor a few degrees and there it is, reminding me:

The market for something to believe in is infinite

We're More Than Just Blogs

I just thought I'd point out that though our name is Business Blogging Pros, we're about more than just blogs.

I've been active on Twitter for almost two years and have started giving webinars to help businesses use Twitter. 

You hear a lot about Social Media Marketing these days.  I've been teaching business owners how to engage in social media marketing programs for two years - we just haven't been calling it that.

Over the next several months, you can expect to see a broadening of our focus though - some way to make the brand be known for more than just blogs. Part of this process is deciding on a name.  Business Blogging Pros is a great name and one of our challenges is to come up with a new name - be it a variation or extension of the current name vs an entirely new name - that is as memorable as Business Blogging Pros.

Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.