by admin on June 21, 2010
WordPress has recently released its 13th major update since it was first developed, and this is a significant. I’ve been using WordPress for 5 years now, and It’s definitely the best open-source blogging platform in the world. You cannot find a better blogging platform with more plugins, free themes, and premium themes than WordPress. It’s now evolved into more of a comprehensive content management system. Here’s a video put together by WordPress to highlight some of the highlights of the 3.0 release:
Key New Features:
- WordPress and WordPress MU have merged, allowing the management of multiple sites (called Multisite) from one WordPress installation. I’ve got to look more into this. I am not sure how it will work, but this could really help someone like me who manages about 5 different WordPress sites.
- New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress. Thank god, they’ve finally retired the default “Kubrick” theme.
- Bulk updating of themes with an automatic maintenance mode during the process and bulk plugin-in upgrading. I hated going through plug-ins individually and updating them. This is a nice feature that was long overdue.
- New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.
So if you’re wondering if you should upgrade to version 3.0, my opinion is “yes”. I know that the new installs can be buggy sometimes, but since this is such a big roll-out, I think it will be generally bug-free. Of course, there always seem to be conflicts with third-party plug-ins, so make sure you back up your database and upgrade your plug-ins before you make the new install. You can either do the automatic upgrade in your WordPress install’s dashboard or click here to download it.
by admin on June 16, 2010
It’s official, I’m upgrading to the new iPhone 4. If you tried pre-ordering one yesterday, it was freakin’ frustrating. There were so many people trying to pre-order, it crashed AT&T and Apple’s servers. You’d think that multibillion dollar companies would account for the amount of bandwidth they’d be eating up, but apparently not. I got a hot tip from a Cult of Mac reader to download the Apple Store app and reserve one through that. I was able to do it, before that secret little tip went viral on Facebook and Twitter, and I’ll be picking it up sometime on June 24th. Hopefully, I don’t have to wait too long in line. Did I mention that I hate waiting in line? Plus, the little Mac genius/nerds are gonna try to sell me a bunch of crappy accessories that I don’t want or need. But anyway, I was successful, and here’s my confirmation!
I sat through the entire live blogging on Engadget of the iPhone 4 unveiling at WWDC for Cult of Mac, because I run their Facebook and Twitter profiles. Even though the iPhone 4 was leaked months ago with the whole Gizmodo and lost phone debacle, there were still a TON of features that I was floored by. Here’s just a short list:
- 720p HD video capture, nice!
- Multi-tasking in the OS. ‘Bout time!
- LED camera flash.
- Gyro-scope. Not sure how to explain it, but it’ll make gaming even MORE fun
- A beautiful HD display. It’s going to be gorgeous.
I know there’s other smart phones out there with similar specs, and I know that AT&T is horrible, but the one trump card with the iPhone is its app store. It will ALWAYS have the best apps, because the best developers focus on the iPhone. Why? Because they’ll make the most money in iTunes. Without being too dramatic, the iPhone has changed the way I approach my life and my business. I can literally run my business from my phone, get all of the information I need throughout the day, and I can always stimulate my mind while waiting in line!
I hear all the time that people are still skeptical about investing time and money in social media marketing campaigns. I mean, seriously? What more evidence do you need? Stop throwing out the “But, how do we measure ROI with social media?”. Just ask Vitamin Water, JetBlue, Dell, and Southwest how their investment in social media has worked out for them. Increased SALES is how you measure the ROI, and just ask the local restaurant or retail store that’s running an effective social media marketing campaign how it’s working out for them. It’ll still take a couple of years for the dissenters who hold onto old-fashioned marketing methods, so for those of you who still need to be convinced, here are 50 ways why social media marketing is here to stay: (in no particular order)
- It’s two-way marketing
- It’s a great customer service tool
- It gives the customer a voice
- It eliminates the need to spend a ton of money on focus groups. Your following IS your focus group
- Ask a marketing research question, and you get instant data.
- The only cost to produce it is hiring great talent
- Complaint resolutions are documented for other customers to see
- The viral nature of it is closely related to the viral nature of word-of-mouth marketing
- It IS word-of-mouth marketing, but in a digital sense.
- You can make mistakes and explain why you made it
- Intimate contact with your loyal customers and target market
- You can focus on a very specific target market
- It sends traffic back to your website
- It builds inbound links to your website
- It’s great for search engine optimization
- Facebook pages can be used like a forum
- Ability to create multiple Twitter profiles for multiple uses
- Allows you to respond to what’s being said about your brand/business
- It’s more natural than traditional marketing channels
- You control the message
- Endless creative promotion possibilities
- Allows customers to participate in product development
- It has the ability to reach a large amount of consumers on a perpetual time line.
- It can reach a large amount of customers and fans in real-time.
- Customers can respond and react to new business information and products in real-time.
- It has the ability to increase sales
- It has to ability to attract new clients
- It can help you establish yourself as an expert or authority in your industry
- Allows you to respond to complaints before negative word-of-mouth takes place.
- Allows employees to be brand evangelizers.
- The technology is free and open source
- Social media is now adopted by most age groups.
- Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that aren’t using it
- Allows a competitive advantage over your competitors that are abusing it or not using it correctly
- Gives the ability to update customers about promotions and specials in real-time.
- It has more than just a monetary return on investment.
- We are social creatures.
- It helps you build trust with the consumer
- Experimenting won’t cost you a lot of money
- It’s not as time consuming as you might think
- Your customer’s opinion counts
- Did we mention the technology is free?
- It spans across all media, including photos, videos, audio, and text
- It’s SO MUCH LESS annoying than text/SMS marketing
- Its effectiveness BLOWS text/SMS marketing out of the water
- Did I mention text/SMS marketing sucks?
- You’re building an army of loyal customers we affectionately call “regulars”.
- Builds team/employee morale
- It can be used as a recruiting tool
- Facebook has over 400 million active users worldwide. Twitter has over 75 million users. YouTube and Facebook are the #2 and #3 most visited websites in the world. Every second a new blog is created. Need I say more?
If you haven’t embraced social media for your business yet, then you’ve been living under a rock. It’s here, and it’s here to stay. It has a real return on investment, it WILL grow your sales if done right, and it DOES require someone who knows what they’re doing to run a successful campaign. Are you convinced yet? If so, check out my company’s website at Presence Media, and give us a call or contact us to discuss starting a social media marketing campaign for your small business.
Starbucks announced yesterday that they’ll be offering a mayor special to nationwide all mayors of their individual stores. The special is a $1 off to the mayor for one of their however-you-want-it Frappuccinos. That’s a pretty good discount considering it’s about $4 for a tall Frappuccino. The offer lasts until 6/28, but the people over at FourSquare think that Starbucks will continue to experiment with more mayor specials, and maybe other loyalty-based promotions through FourSquare.
After reading this, I now know that FourSquare and location-based gaming and marketing services are here to stay. I have been touting the importance and significance of customers competing over arbitrary titles and gaining points for visiting their favorite stores and restaurants, but few people listen to me when I tell them that it will catch on and marketers will start paying attention to these location-based applications. Well, is Starbucks big enough for you? Starbucks is not the first major brand to partner up with FourSquare, but it is DEFINITELY the most significant, because think of how many times you visit your favorite Starbucks per week? It’s hard to get competitive over being the mayor of your favorite fine-dining restaurant, because you may only eat there once a month. But with Starbucks, we visit their cafes almost every day, so this is a genius move by Starbucks to offer a mayor special. A lot of Starbucks customers are also very tech savvy, because many of them sit in Starbucks and work on their computer or mobile devices. Starbucks obviously knows this, so I really think they’ll see the statistics of the amount of people “checking in” to their stores skyrocket.
Will this be the catalyst for large and small businesses using location-based marketing strategies like mayor specials on FourSquare? I think it will be, and if you own a small business or work in a company that thinks this might be a fun marketing experiment for your company, visit FourSquare and click on their link “Businesses: Use Foursquare to reward your customers“.
(img credits: Thomas_Hawk)
In celebration of YouTube’s 5th anniversary as a website, Conan O’Brien was asked to pick his top five favorite YouTube videos from over the past few years. YouTube is the 3rd largest website in the world, and its search engine is the second biggest in the world, behind Google. It only took five years for that kind of growth, because video has the BEST potential for viral growth. If you’re a small business owner or someone looking to brand yourself, think about that for a minute. You probably aren’t creating good video content, but you should be, because it can be GOLD on the Internet.
I posted 3 of the 5 top videos. The other two are HILARIOUS, but not safe for work, and I just didn’t feel good about posting them on this site. You can watch all five on Mashable’s post about it.
Pinky The Cat
The guy’s scream at the end is priceless.
Trololo Song
This guy just freaks me out!
CSI: Miami – Endless Caruso One Liners
I’ve never liked CSI: Miami and I love this montage, because it shows just how cheese-ball this show is
